Bevo,
That's been in the stars for a long time already.
Next week thursday all other alternatives will be presented in the parliament but it seems unlikely (but not at all impossible) that they are going for anything other than the F35, numbers will be much lower than originally planned, the ruling party today stated that even a number as low as 33 is acceptable and workeable.
The problem is that the ruling party VVD (right wing liberal democrats) is very much in bed with LM and Dutch companies involved in the JSF.
The upper echelon of the military (particulary the Air force) is very US oriented, they have wet dream about having another longterm overseas training base in the US which means many visits and longterm stays in the US, which is much prefered over France, cold Sweden or some boring base in the UK; Spain or Germany.
The other services, Army and Navy however have nightmares about the havoc the F35 is going to inflict on the rest of the defense budget, also (and I know this very first hand) the rest of the Air Force is having sleepless nights about future opportunities, 33-38 (of which 6 in the US on a permanent base) aircraft that are substantially more expensive to operate on a per hour base and much of the maintenance (let alone upgrades) which can only be done by LM related private externa companies (contractors)
is going to cut deeply on all available positions in the Dutch Air Force.
Also supporting aircraft like their Trainers or refuellers can be used much less, even further degrading the available positions.
This thing is going to handicap their entire Military, they are now betting heavily on a deeper partnership with other NATO allies (preferably neighbouring nations) to alleviate some of their biggest concerns regarding quantity issues.
With a little bit of bad luck ,and history says that it is completely within the realms of possibilities, there is going to be a steep learning curve in the beginning of its (F35) operational life.
This will inevitably lead to a hightened accident rate for the first 10-15 years.
Every lost F35 will be nothing less than a substantial loss of available power.
Flying the F35 around the good weather bases like they do now in the US is nothing like operating in a highly used airspace, with sometimes very challenging weather conditions in the hands of pilots with widely varying levels of experience.
Besides the introduction of this new platform, they are also going to have to rewrite a lot of the tactics syllabus to compensate for the new feature of stealth, I'm really wondering how they will make this workeable with the limited anount of flying time they will have.
The US , UK and countries like Israel Norway and Singapore, who all have money and resources to burn can maybe make full use of the full capabilities the F35 promises to achieve.
But countries that are more financially challenged will have some real problems achieving the same level of capacity.
Besides all this the question remains, what is the justification for the JSF, the few advantages it offers over its competitiors is completely negated by the fact that countries like the Netherlands have no need for these capabilities.
Also I still remember the beginning of the MLU program for our F16's and how much we added to that upgrade coupled with the fact that many of the F16's subsystems could be developped by our own industries, all that is lost with the F35, for every bolt, codeline or weapon that needs changing we'll be forced to call and pay what LM dictates (no contract can foresee the future that well and predict all the costs long ahead).
This is a historic blunder of epic proportions an it will bring many airforces/militaries down to their knees or severely cripple their longterm prospects.
Today we still have a big edge on most of our most likely future adversaries, most of that edge comes from the fact that the balance between technological capabilities, training doctrine and quantity of material and personnel is still fairly good, the F35 will effectively change that and destabelize it for the worse.
Also as a final thought exercise on what the future can bring for us European nations;
Lately their have been many developments in the world that indicate that the future will most likely hold many challenges for us , on many accounts more than for our US allies.
Contrary to the vast resources the US uncovered in the last decade (OIL and GAS reserves more than anybody else in the world), we in Europe have very little of such reserves.
This means that the Us can (and will) stop fixating on the Middle East and Russia and relay their interests on where they deem them to be served the best, namely the Far East.
We , on the other hand, will be forced to protect our interests and also will need to protect ourselves just because we are located so close to these troubled areas in the world.
We just cannot afford to be fully dependant on the US when it comes to stuff as important as a frontline fighter, certainly not with the terms attached with the JSF (F18, F15 could be acceptable).
We absolutely need to retain the ability to design, build and operate high end fighters like we did before.
Luckily we have all that we need for now and still posses the ability the stay at the edge(forefront) of weaponsystem development.
The Gripen NG, RAFALE and TYPHOON can serve all our needs well into the next couple of decades provided we keep developping upgrades and expand upon their existing capabilities.
In 15-20 years we might want to start thinking about making our own replacment for our DELTA-CANARDS.
Also many people might not like the idea but the defense industry is also a good exporting industry, no need to leave that entirely to our US friends when we can make and sell a valid product ourselves.