United States of Lockheed Martin Scores Big in Finland

Editor's note: Here is NATO (antagonist) again acting as a sales organization that must have made the Finnish people overwhelmed in joy to be poking Russia in the eye.

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Source: euronews

Finland orders 64 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets

Lockheed F-35 jet wins Finnish fighter competition - source - Copyright Thomson Reuters 2021

By Mike Stone and Essi Lehto | December 12, 2021

WASHINGTON/HELSINKI -Finland has chosen U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighters in a tender to replace ageing F/A-18 combat jets and plans to order 64 planes with weapons systems, the government said on Friday.

Lockheed Martin competed for the deal with Sweden's Saab, U.S. rival Boeing, France's Dassault and Britain’s BAE Systems.

The procurement is worth an estimated 8.378 billion euros ($9.44 billion), the government said.

"When comparing military performance, the F-35 best met our needs," Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen told a news conference.

Military planemakers have been vying for the deal since late 2015, when the Finnish defence ministry began the search for a new jet to replace Finland’s old Hornet fighter bought in 1992 from McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing.

Finland is the 14th nation to opt for the F-35.

The choice strengthens the small Nordic nation's defence cooperation with its allies, most significantly the United States and Norway, said researcher Charly Salonius-Pasternak at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

"Finland and Norway already train together in the north so it will be a political decision to determine what intelligence is shared and when," he told Reuters, referring to the potential for the jets to share data in real time.

Unlike Norway, Finland is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) but it has forged stronger ties with the organisation in recent years and chosen military equipment compatible with NATO members.

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Outside of dropping bombs on Gaza and in Syria by the Israeli Air Force, these things have never really been involved in real aerial combat. Maybe the government of Finland should have consulted with the government in Japan before making their $10 billion purchase?

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