The United States welcomes “at the highest levels” Greece’s interest in purchasing F-35 fighter jets, US Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt has announced.
“We have signaled our support for procurement and are working closely together on a future acquisition programme, which would enhance Greece’s defence capabilities, ensure interoperability with US Armed Forces and improve regional stability. All reports to the contrary are false and misrepresentations of US policy,” Pyatt said, his remarks published on the US Embassy’s webpage on Monday.
Calling the US-Greek defence relationship “one of America’s strongest military relationships in Europe,” Pyatt said Washington was working with Athens “daily to advance from strength,” including via its F-35 plans.
He noted, however, that “the path to acquisition of the F-35 is a multi-year process” that would have to “build upon the successes realised in Greece’s F-16 Viper upgrade programme.”
Greece’s General Director for Defence Investments and Armaments, Theodoros Lagios, announced in mid-November that Athens plans to buy up to two dozen F-35s, and urged Washington to rush the order, citing “internal fiscal arrangements and other applicable rules within the EU budget and deficit framework.”
The request comes after Greece’s earlier announcement about its plans to buy 18 Dassault Rafale fighters from France. News website The Greek Reporter indicated that the Rafales and F-35s should help Athens “change the balance of power with Turkey” if and when they are supplied.
Turkey was unceremoniously booted out of the F-35 fighter programme in July 2019 after it refused to give up on its S-400s, which the Pentagon called incompatible with NATO air-defence standards and a possible threat to alliance aircraft. Turkey’s departure forced Lockheed Martin to find replacements for a whopping 1,005 different parts made by Turkish defence contractors, leading to a temporary dip in F-35 production.
With an estimated lifetime price of $1.6 trillion, the F-35 is easily the most expensive weapons project in history, and a controversial one, with the US Government Accountability Office continuing to find major flaws and bugs in the plane’s hardware and software, and potentially life-threatening issues affecting the jet’s operation.
Greek media has indicated that Athens wants its F-35s at a price of $77.9 million per plane for the conventional take-off and landing variant, meaning a total price of up to $1.8 billion. That would be in addition to the $1.5 billion Greece already agreed to spend to upgrade its General Dynamics F-16s in 2019.
The Greek-Turkish gas dispute began in August, when Ankara sent a gas-drilling ship to disputed Mediterranean waters after Greece and Egypt signed an exclusive economic zone maritime delimitation pact. Athens and Cairo reached the agreement after Ankara and the Turkish-backed government in Tripoli, Libya signed a similar deal in late 2019.
