To renew its air capacities, the Spanish government wants to favor European design planes, rather than turning to the American F-35.
Buy European rather than American. According to the Madrid daily El País, which quotes Spanish government sources, the left government of Pedro Sánchez has “definitively” given up buying F-35 combat aircraft from Lockheed Martin, because it considers that such a transaction would be “incompatible” with its decision to devote 85% of the additional funds released to European equipment.
Spain, which plans to acquire several dozen fighter planes, has opted for European devices, whether it is the Eurofighter or the next air combat system (SCAF), to the detriment of the American F-35s, the Spanish Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday.
“The choice of Spain goes through the current Eurofighter and the next SCAF,” the ministry told AFP in a short response, thus confirming a Madrid daily article.
In its 2023 budget, Spain had planned a first amount of 6.25 billion euros to replace the AV-8B Harrier of the Navy and the F/A-18 Hornet of the Air Force.
The specialized British publication Janes, which is generally very well informed, said last year that Madrid was planning to order 50 F-35 units, a plane manufactured by the American firm Lockheed Martin.
Spend more, spend European
This choice displayed for European devices has the potential to further increase the current tensions between Washington and Madrid, which suffered from the refusal of Pedro Sánchez, during the last NATO summit, to undertake to bring Spain’s military spending to 5% of GDP, as American President Donald Trump demanded that members of the Alliance.
Pedro Sánchez had announced shortly before Spain was going to bring its defense budget to 2% of GDP this year.
Three European countries (Germany, Spain and France) are involved in the SCAF, a very ambitious project which must be developed by Dassault Aviation, Airbus and the Spanish company Indra Sistemas. The program regularly crosses turbulence areas, due to differences related to governance and industrial distribution, which do not fail to occur in the design of armaments programs for several nations.
