The offer is still clearly meant to sweeten the deal for prospective customers. Chemezov’s decision to name the UAE specifically is also notable given that in 2017 it had appeared that the country was making real progress in negotiations with the United States about acquiring the F-35. Reports that year indicated that such discussions were advanced enough that Gulf nation was looking at potential initial order of 24 Joint Strike Fighters.
“There have not been any classified briefings [with the UAE on the F-35]. There will not be any discussions [on the F-35] this week,” Ellen Lord, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, told reporters on Nov. 16, 2019, according to Defense News. “We do not have ongoing with the Emiratis right now. We are, within the U.S., discussing how we might end up in those.”
On Nov. 18, Defense News’ Valerie Insinna Tweeted out that Clarke Cooper, the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, had reiterated “that there are no ongoing discussions with the UAE on the F-35.” Under Secretary of Defense Lord had also said that the focus with regards to the UAE had shifted to discussions about modernizing its already advanced fleet of F-16E/F Desert Falcon fighter jets, aircraft that you can read about in more detail in this past War Zone story.
Lord did not elaborate on the reasons why the UAE had apparently moved away from its years-long push to acquire the F-35 or whether that decision originated with that country or the United States, or both parties mutually. Past reports often cited general security concerns about the export of the Joint Strike Fighters to the UAE, as well as the potential risks they might pose to Israel’s regional military edge, as reasons why the U.S. government was reticent to approve such a deal.
However, the Joint Strike Fighter, with its integral back-end cloud-based network, which is essential for key operational and sustainment tasks, offered an unprecedented potential export control mechanism, as The War Zone
explored in detail back in 2017. The ability to remotely cut off vital software updates and network access, and perhaps even disable it entirely, could have helped assuage U.S. and Israeli fears to some degree. Beyond that, the UAE and Israel have found increasingly common ground over shared concerns about Iran and its malign activities in the region.
It’s also not clear whether a major spat between the United States and Turkey over the latter country’s purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system played any part in this movement away from work on a prospective UAE F-35 deal. The U.S. government ejected Turkey from the Joint Strike Fighter program earlier this year and the Turkish defense industry is on track to lose billions of dollars worth of related contracts. The Turkish government is now at risk of further sanctions, as well.
It’s not hard to see how the UAE might not have been thrilled about subjecting itself to such significant restrictions, not to mention the additional potential hurdles of Lockheed Martin retaining its own extensive control over the operational and sustainment of the aircraft, intellectual property rights issues that even the U.S. military and its NATO allies have chafed at. That the jets could have second-order impacts on other defense procurement decisions, as Turkey has found with the S-400, and open up new risks for automatic sanctions may not have been appealing, either.
The Su-57 is certainly not equivalent to the F-35, but it does have a number of interesting and unique features that make it a very capable design if everything works as it’s supposed to. You can read more about these capabilities in detail in this past War Zone feature.
Whatever the case, Russia is clearly aware of the UAE’s decision to back away from an F-35 purchase plan, at least for the time being, and it’s not surprising that the Kremlin is already presenting itself as an alternative. Prior to 2017, there had already been regular reports that the Russians were working on a deal to sell Su-35 Flanker-E fourth-generation fighters to the UAE, though some had speculated this was part of an effort to pressure the United States into selling the Joint Strike Fighter.
Russia’s messaging to the UAE seems very similar to what it has done with regards to Turkey following the S-400 sale. Moscow now says a potential sale of fourth-generation Su-35s to Ankara is in the works and Chemezov has previously proposed a sale of Su-57s for the Turkish Air Force. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offhandedly indicated interest in earlier this year. The “localization” offer could make such a future deal more appealing for Turkey, especially given the loss of F-35-related contracts.