The US also rigged the Norwegian selection of the F-35. It was was pretty much pre-decided that Norway had to go for the F35 for political reasons, even though all the committees preferred the Swedish JAS Gripen. The US gave them a great excuse by denying the export by Raytheon of an important upgrade. All this was revealed by Wikileaks. http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2010/12/wikile...
The US doesn't want it's allies to get the best equipment for their usage - they want their allies to send them money. With allies like that, who needs enemies?
of course we export our advanced weaponry. buying the plane is just part of the process. once you own it, you need to have ground support, computer and communication capabilities, not to mention spare parts, and engineers to support the process - most likely on lease from the manufacturer. pilots are important but just one part of the equation.
selling complicated weaponry like planes is a great way for countries to foster dependency. you would have to be pretty stupid to go to war against the US using American planes. you wouldn't be able to fly them for long without mechanical support (parts etc), engineering support.
There's no real means to stop them defecting, surely? All the pilot has to do is fly over the border and land, while not getting shot down by the country he's defecting to.
Iran got hold of a drone. It's not quite the drone "defecting" but it's somewhat similar.
This is a high end weapon, heavily computerized, loaded with explosives ... I'm not saying there is definitely a self-destruct command, but if I were landing one in China I'd be sweating.
Most of the explosives on a plane are pretty much designed to be easily dropped. While some components may have self destruct capabilities, I doubt a defecting pilot could be easily prevented from defecting.
In the case of the F35, I'd love to see many of them reaching enemy countries.. Attempting to replicate it would send their aerospace industries back decades.
They don't have a self-destruct of any sort. In 2001 an aircraft loaded with state of the art surveillance equipment collided with a Chinese fighter and was forced to make an emergency landing in China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident) which must've been an interesting experience for the crew.
They had to destroy as much of that presumably staggeringly expensive equipment as they could to avoid it falling into the wrong hands.
I did not know that instead of the C4 you'd expect to see from movies, they used hot coffee to destroy most of the equipment.
Of course they're exporting it... if you buy it as part of the $150 million dollar package that is the F-35. It's still the same customer buying it (Norway)
Same in Netherland. It has to be an American plane, even if it means shrinking the airforce from the original 100 planes to about 30. Everybody is against it, but when the decision has to be made, somehow just enough MPs vote in favour of the F-35.
The US doesn't want it's allies to get the best equipment for their usage - they want their allies to send them money. With allies like that, who needs enemies?