Spain officially discarded the option of buying U.S.-made F-35 fighter planes in favor of two European options—the Eurofighter and the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), the government's defence ministry confirmed on Wednesday.
The confirmation came after El Pais reported Tuesday that Spain had dropped plans to buy the F-35, which is made by American aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
In a reply to queries, Lockheed Martin stated: "Foreign military sales are government-to-government transactions, and this issue is best dealt with by the U.S. or Spanish government."
Spanish government had set aside €6.25 billion (around $7.24 billion) in its 2023 defence budget to buy new fighter planes, El Pais said. But after a wider decision was made to pour most of this year's extra €10.5 billion of defence spending into European-based projects, buying the American planes was no longer an option, according to the newspaper.
In June of this year, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez reiterated Spain's pledge to up defence spending to NATO's 2% of GDP target by 2025. However, he has pushed back on U.S. demands for an even bigger increase to 5% in the long term—a policy that has been criticized by former U.S. President Donald Trump, who even threatened to slap retaliatory tariffs on Spanish exports.
To date, the American embassy in Madrid has not made any public announcement of Spain's F-35 decision.
The Eurofighter is jointly developed by Airbus, BAE Systems, and Leonardo, while the FCAS is jointly developed by Dassault Aviation, Airbus, and Spain's Indra Sistemas.
(Exchange rate: $1 = €0.8634)
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