It seems the Danish order will only be a firm order for 21 aircraft, the remaining 6 being an option - depending on what the price and running costs actually turn out to be.......
Agreement for the Acquisition of New Combat Aircraft
(EDITOR’S NOTE:
So, in the final analysis, Denmark does not know what price it will pay for its F-35As, and if the price increases it will buy fewer of them. This is the reason why, instead of the publicized figure of 27, the parties have in fact committed to buy only 21, with the remaining six to be bought only if there is enough money to pay for them.
This, by the way, would bring the purchase in line with the intentions of the Konservative party, which voted against the purchase because it wants to limit the number to 21. Given that this is barely enough to equip a single operational squadron, if it hard to understand why, given the cost, Denmark does not simply do away with fast jets altogether.
All the more so that Danish media, including the Berlingske daily newspaper, puts the lifetime costs of the F-35 fleet at well over 50 billion krone, or about $7.6 billion, while Henrik Dam Christensen, defense speaker for the opposition Social Democrats, puts that figure at 55 billion kroner.
In any case, given the F-35’s history of cost inflation, late delivery and mandatory upgrades, it is more than likely that, like Norway and the Netherlands, it will end up with far fewer aircraft that it initially wanted – in this case no more than 21.