[palata]

The F-35 is an expensive, very criticised (even inside the US) plane and the US notoriously have some kind of backdoor to it. It makes no sense to me that the EU would buy F-35 other than as a way to give money to the US ("buying protection").

[Vilian]

F-35 is cheaper than the f14 converting, so not a good argument, the high selling numbers of it help drive the price down

[palata]

My point was that the F-35 is more expensive than European planes which don't have a US backdoor.

In fact I think it was the US army that complained about the F-35 being way too expensive.