The Catch Of Buying An F-35: You Still Need Lockheed Martin To Keep It Stealthy

Published Aug 18, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT Luke Diaz is a freelance military writer with experience with active duty experience in the US Navy as well as defense and industrial engineering. He is a former Naval Flight Officer who performed tactical air control on the carrier-based E-2 Hawkeye. Foreign Military Sales Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II operators are trapped in a loop of dependency due to the manufacturer's strict control. The very small radar cross-section achieved by the design of the F-35 is its key tactical value. Stealth technology is not just the radar-absorbent material that covers the outside of the plane. While the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter does incorporate a ram into the actual structure of the composite skin of the plane, which inherently goes beyond just a coat of paint, a complex array of parts and system functions need to be in sync in order for the jet to truly be stealthy. International partner operators cannot hire domestic aerospace companies to troubleshoot many of the bugs or fix mechanical issues beyond routine maintenance. The fact that the US and the F-35's maker 'hold the keys' prevents sovereign nations from independently repairing, upgrading, or managing their own fleets. FMS operators cannot modify the hardware or software independently; they must continuously pay the prime contractor for mandatory, expensive updates just to keep their fleets combat-capable. This has been a contentious point among the 19 allies in the JSF umbrella, even including the United Kingdom, which is the one and only tier one partner, and which has drastically reduced its total order size. Lockheed Martin's Closed Loop RAM Service Credit: US Air Force Unlike older stealth aircraft which rely heavily on spray-on liquid coatings that scratch and peel easily, the F-35 integrates its stealth directly into its physical structure. When an FMS operator encounters skin damage, such as a bird strike, a deep tool gouge, or heat damage from supersonic flight, they cannot simply patch it. The specific polymers, microscopic radar-absorbing particles, and curing agents inside the fiber mats are highly classified. Lockheed Martin maintains a monopoly on this process by withholding the critical materials and data. Even once a patch is applied, it must be verified to ensure the RCS has not been compromised. Operators scan the repaired area using a Handheld Low Observable Scan System, but data is highly encrypted. The local unit cannot interpret whether the repair passed or failed. The dataset must be beamed back to Lockheed Martin facilities in the US. The aircraft is grounded until Lockheed Martin engineers remotely sign off on the flight clearance, leaving the FMS operator entirely dependent on foreign authorization to use their own asset. Because of these restrictions, FMS maintenance is split into two severely unequal categories, fueling the global depot backlog. Squadron-level maintainers are limited to basic, temporary fixes. They can apply tape or a simple liquid paste to seal light scratches. These temporary patches degrade quickly under high G-forces or bad weather, acting only as a stopgap measure. If the composite skin suffers more serious structural damage, the jet must be sent to a heavy maintenance depot. Because only a few regional facilities have the specialized equipment and Lockheed Martin personnel authorized to perform deep composite curing, aircraft sit idle in long maintenance queues. This directly degrades the fleet's readiness and keeps mission-capable rates stubbornly low. The Story Behind The F-35 Sticker Price Credit: US Air Force The financial reality of the F-35 program reveals the publicized $80 million to $90 million flyaway unit cost. FMS operators pay a major financial penalty to operate the F-35 compared to US military services. This premium is driven by reliance on Contractor Logistics Support and rigid, centralized intellectual property frameworks. An FMS buyer cannot simply purchase a jet for $85 million. Integrating the platform requires initial spare parts packages, specialized tooling, data links, and dedicated training infrastructure. Shipping components back to regional depots or the US incurs international transport fees, administrative surcharges, and long turnaround times. This means an FMS operator can pay up to double per flight hour than an American squadron executing identical missions with domestic depot pipelines. Consequently, real-world FMS procurement contracts routinely exceed $250 million to $300 million per airframe when factoring in the required infrastructure to make the jets operational. While legacy multirole fighters like the F-16 operate at roughly $20,000 to $27,000 per flight hour, the F-35 platform costs between $33,000 and $42,000 per hour to operate. As nations cut their total buy orders to cope with rising costs, the global fleet shrinks. Macroeconomics Breaks Down For The F-35 Credit: US Air Force The entire business case for the F-35 relied on economies of scale. Building a massive, uniform fleet of over 3,000 aircraft across dozens of allies, the program would achieve unprecedented macroeconomic efficiencies. Because the fixed overhead costs of Lockheed’s centralized stealth verification and logistics network remain constant, those costs are redistributed across fewer planes, driving the sustainment premiums even higher for the remaining partners. High volume was supposed to drive down the cost of everything, from the physical airframe to the daily cost per flight hour. The macroeconomics broke because while nations can cut the number of jets they buy, the fixed cost of Lockheed Martin’s proprietary infrastructure remains. As the Technology Refresh Three Block Four software freezes and skyrocketing CLS premiums force partners like Switzerland and Finland to slash their fleet sizes or delay buys, the fixed cost of that global infrastructure doesn't disappear. It gets redistributed across fewer active planes. The collapse of this macroeconomic engine completely sabotages the strategic military purpose of the aircraft. Air combat doctrine openly acknowledges that on an individual, one-on-one level, an F-35 is actually less aerodynamically capable than several legacy platforms or advanced adversary jets. It is slower, has less kinematic energy, carries a smaller internal weapons payload, and has a shorter unrefueled combat radius than aircraft like the Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker or even a Boeing F-15EX Eagle II. The Cost Of Statesmanship Credit: US Air Force Donald Trump’s erratic foreign policy and 'America First' transactional approach have introduced major geopolitical volatility into the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. By treating defense pacts and advanced military hardware as bargaining chips, his rhetoric and policy shifts have strained international partnerships and complicated an already extremely ambitious international defense program. Trump officially kicked Turkey out of the F-35 program after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan purchased the Russian S-400 missile defense system. Then, at the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump abruptly reversed course and signaled his strong willingness to lift sanctions and allow them back in, as The Hill covered. Before that, the trade war with Canada stoked by Trump had led the country to reconsider its order for 88 F-35s, while the US responded by threatening to take over the NORAD defense alliance. Similarly, Trump alienated Denmark with aggressive rhetoric about annexing or buying Greenland from the country as they are just standing up their first F-35 squadron. Another contentious point has been that founding partners like the United Kingdom, Italy, and the Netherlands do not have the same level of access that Israel does despite investing in the program from the beginning on a far larger scale. Israel is the only country allowed to install its own sovereign 'app-like' command-and-control software, unique electronic warfare suites, and indigenous weapons. In light of these events over the past years, Spain and Portugal have both entirely canceled their orders for the F-35. The UK has slashed its total fleet from 138 down to 63, and Australia looks like it will no longer be procuring a total of 100 and instead limiting its JSF inventory to just 72. The F-35's Unfulfilled Goal Of Affordable Mass Credit: US Air Force The 19 global partners entered this program under the promise of collective defense and shared risk. Because the macroeconomics behind the JSF are faltering, that massive fleet is dissolving into fragmented pockets. The actual military power of the F-35 is not the individual airframe. It is the mass of the interconnected global network. The strategic objective was to overwhelm near-peer adversaries through sheer numbers or superior performance, but rather a massive, data-linked wall of stealth sensors that dwarfs any opposing fleet. If the global supply chain fractures, or if a political shift during the Trump administration cuts off access to the proprietary software keys needed to certify a repaired RAM skin, large portions of that overwhelming mass are instantly grounded. Because Lockheed Martin holds the keys to the technical baseline, an FMS operator cannot dynamically deploy their jets in a high-intensity conflict without constant US contractor verification. This economic and strategic breakdown feeds directly into a diplomatic and defense crisis. Credit: US Air Force When the US executes unilateral diplomatic moves that impact the partners of the JSF program, it shatters the macroeconomic predictability of the entire enterprise. Case in point, Turkey was not just a buyer. It was a critical manufacturing node for airframe components. Jerking countries in and out of the supply chain based on transactional diplomacy disrupts parts availability, creates manufacturing bottlenecks, and forces the remaining partners to pay even higher premiums to re-tool factories elsewhere. The plane only makes financial sense if everyone buys in at a massive scale, and it only makes military sense if that massive fleet can operate seamlessly as a single, interconnected 'fist.' Instead, the combination of withheld data, a paralyzed TR-3 software upgrade, soaring lifecycle costs, and volatile US policy has undermined the entire endeavor. FMS partners are dissatisfied that they paid a premium price for a leased capability that is too expensive to fly, too broken to upgrade, and far too dependent on a foreign power's permission to operate.