Bill Sweetman reports at Aviation Week‘s Ares blog that U.S. demands that the Netherlands uphold their obligation to purchase two Joint Strike Fighter test aircraft this year may well bring down the current government. The Defense Minister has made his case to the Dutch Parliament in favor of the purchase, but the opposition is threatening a motion of no confidence over the matter. One MP critical of the purchase is quoted mocking the defense minister: “We are not speaking with the Secretary of State for Defense, but with a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.” All of which leads Sweetman to ask:
The decision to close down the F-22 program could be seen as an effort to keep the far more costly Joint Strike Fighter program from collapsing under its own weight. Now that JSF will be the only fifth-generation fighter aircraft in production, the Obama administration really can’t afford to let it fai — apparently even at the expense of bringing down an allied government.
