The problem with the F-35 is its cost for the buying country. Complex, costly, almost no offsets, and black box systems (only the Israeli AFAIK have a custom sy

The problem with the F-35 is its cost for the buying country. Complex, costly, almost no offsets, and black box systems (only the Israeli AFAIK have a custom system). Also it can only take a few munitions, while keeping its supposed stealth, hence the famed RAND study predicting a US defeat in the event of a Taiwan battle. Also it is more fitting to consider the F-35A, F-35B and F-35C as three completely different aircrafts. Two major problems arise : - the "aircraft carrier" or "tessarakonteres" problem : at some point your system (ship or aircraft) is too complex and costly to risk losing it in battle, even if it is supposedly very hard to defeat. And the slightest damage is very costly in terms of down time. This is amplified by the single-type problem. - the F-35 kills your local industry and makes supply and maintenance chains complex and dependent upon US and Lockheed-Martin goodwill, including on the software side. This is one of the major points from critics, among them Boeing. The Finland deal seems to address the last point, and seems much better than other F-35 deals with European countries. That said, the F-35 is a revolution for US allies, even those who didn't buy it. The information flow in central to the aircraft like to no previous US fighter. A few years ago the French Rafale notably defeated every aircraft in air superiority games (draw against the theoretically much better F-22) because its information systems could be updated quickly to the local conditions. Every US-allied Air force around the world acknowledges today that compatibility with the F-35 information systems will be the only way to carry out allied operations in the near future, like Link-16 today. If you can't do it, you'll have a very hard time showing up as a blue dot on the screen, let alone be efficient in combat. The easy solution is to buy Lockheed-Martin. However, I really think it's a bad thing in the long-term.