[fnrslvr]

Yeah, this. Smaller countries can easily wind up holding the bag with less-widely adopted defence procurements, and without a wider community of users investing in the platform and its parts ecosystem it can become a sustainment nightmare.

For example, Australia became the sole operator of the F-111 from when the USAF retired it in 1998, until the RAAF retired it in 2010. The Australian Army also found itself in the position of sole operator of the ARH variant of the Eurocopter Tiger, a situation which lead to severe sustainment issues and exorbitant per-hour flight costs (estimates of up to AU$34k), and eventually lead to the 2021 decision to replace them with Apache Guardians.