US OKs F-35s & F-18s For Finland Fighter Fight

WASHINGTON: Finland took a step toward making a decision on its highly-anticipated fighter plane buy, officially adding the F-35 and F/A-18 to its list of European-made options.

The State Department today sent Congress a notification that the Nordic country is considering acquiring 64 F-35s at a cost of $12.5 billion, or 72 single and double seated F/A-18s, including Growlers, for $14.7 billion. The American aircraft are not alone in the competition. They also face France’s Dassault Rafale, the UK’s Eurofighter Typhoon and the Swedish Saab Gripen E/F.

The new fighters, to replace Finland’s aging fleet of F/A-18C/D Hornets in the early 2030s, are part of a much larger modernization effort by Helsinki that includes replacing seven guided missile ships and minelayers with four new multirole corvettes at a cost of $1.5 billion. The corvettes will have vastly more punch than the current ships in the Baltic fleet, with American and Israeli-made missiles and torpedoes joining a state of the art command and control system that will make the ships a force in the constricted waterway.

While a non-NATO country, Finland has long exercised with other NATO powers in the Baltic and High North, and the constant threat of Russian aggression has seen leaders there inch up defense spending in recent years from about 1.4 percent of GDP in 2020 to over 2 percent next year. 

The fighter procurement has been seen as a key marker for how the government plans to proceed with its modernization plans and integrate with neighbors to train and operate with NATO partners.

Finland’s neighbor Norway has already committed to buying 52 F-35As along with five P-8 submarine-hunting aircraft as part of its effort to bolster its self-defense and track Russian submarines sailing out of the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic, hard on Norway’s northeastern flank.  

The deal is far from done, however. A statement from the Finnish Ministry of Defense today made clear that the State Department’s announcement merely solidified that the two US-made aircraft were in the larger mix, and the number of planes is still a work in progress. 

“The announcement of the notification procedure does not constitute a procurement decision by Finland,” the ministry said.

“The types and quantities of multi-role fighters and weapons specified in the [US] notification do not represent the final content of the Finnish procurement package,” the statement continued. “Instead, the list published by the DSCA indicates those items and quantities that the US administration is prepared to sell at this stage of the procurement process.”

If current schedules hold, the new aircraft will take to the skies just after the new domestically-produced class of Finnish corvettes begins patrolling Baltic Sea, where the Russian Baltic Fleet operates dozens  of ships and a handful of submarines. 

The new Pohjanmaa-class vessels will be built in Finland, but their combat systems will be made by Swedish defense firm Saab, with torpedo systems and new surface-to -surface and surface-to-air missiles. Finland has already purchased Raytheon’s Evolved Seasparrow Missile, along with Israel Aerospace Industries’ Gabriel V anti-ship missiles and Saab’s Torpedo 47 torpedoes.

The four ships are expected to be operational by 2028.

Building a deterrent force in the Baltic Sea and protecting its 800-mile border with Russia are Finland’s driving national security priorities, and have driven it closer to NATO in recent years.

While Russia’s Baltic Fleet doesn’t pack the punch of its Northern Fleet, it can still harass shipping with little opposition from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, who possesses little to no naval capability able to challenge Moscow. Russian can also project power deep into the maritime through its formidable anti-access/area denial capabilities in Kaliningrad.