International: The ballad of Lockheed Martin’s F-35

Singapore will receive four F-35 fighter jets from the US next year. The Republic has ordered 20 in total for more than S$2bn, with the last due in 2030. The F-35s are fifth-generation planes, designed to evade radar, present processed data from varied sensors (older planes provide raw data which pilots must interpret on the fly), and share that data instantly with allied warships and ground forces. For admirers, they are the acme of design innovation, engineering and systems integration; winged warriors in an uncertain world. For critics, they’re emblematic of the worst tendencies of the US military-industrial complex, and the dysfunction of its politics.

Lockheed Martin—the world’s largest weapons manufacturers—began developing F-35s in the late 1990s, at the US government’s behest and the US taxpayer’s expense. Software malfunctions and hardware failures doubled both delivery time and costs, from an initial S$103m per plane to around S$200m in 2010. In 2014, one of the machines caught fire during take-off, costing nearly S$65m; in 2015, the F-35 “performed poorly” in a simulated dogfight against an older plane. An estimate suggested that the 2,500 planes the US has ordered for itself will cost more than S$2trn over the fleet’s 60-year lifespan. (Roughly S$8,000 per US adult, or three times Singapore’s current GDP.) One analyst compared the expenditure to buying a first-class ticket on Singapore Airlines, “anyone’s choice if someone else were footing the bill but…not worth the trade-off for most people most of the time.”

Why US politicians stuck with the F-35 despite monumental delays and gargantuan costs is, fittingly, a marvel of political engineering: “the art of spreading a military project to as many congressional districts [akin to constituencies] as possible, and thus maximizing the number of members of Congress who feel that if they cut off funding, they’d be hurting themselves.” The supply chain of the F-35 was spread over 90 districts (of 435) across the country, spanning states red and blue, and thus supported by politicians neoliberal and socialist. There are many international partners too, including Israel, an avid Lockheed Martin customer and the first foreign buyer of the F-35s. (It has used them in the Gazan genocide, precipitating interrogations globally into the F-35 “supply chain of death”.) Yet, as the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, the firm’s overall outlook was grim; no wars, fewer sales.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Neighbouring Finland, perhaps sensing Russian moves early, had ordered 64 machines mere weeks before; Greece followed suit with 20; the Czech Republic 24; Romania 32; Germany 35; and Canada 88. The winds of war filled Lockheed’s sails; for Washington, they tied allies into a software ecosystem controlled by a US firm. “It’s as if America and NATO run on iOS, while China and Russia run on Android—and nations must pick one system over the other,” wrote a commentator. A Black Mirror episode waiting to be written.