President Trump indicated Tuesday that his administration is actively considering the sale of U.S. F-35 Lightning II fighter jets to Turkey, reversing a longstanding block on the transfer of the advanced stealth aircraft while highlighting his personal rapport with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The statement came on the sidelines of the NATO summit, immediately drawing scrutiny from defense hawks and domestic manufacturing advocates who question the wisdom of transferring sensitive military technology to a regime with adversarial procurement relationships.
A Transaction Reset
The potential sale would mark a complete reversal from the 2019 decision to expel Ankara from the F-35 program following its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system. That prior expulsion cost American workers in the production line—Lockheed Martin sources components from hundreds of domestic suppliers across 45 states—by removing a planned 100-unit order. Trump's current posture, however, bypasses that industrial logic for a transactional diplomatic reset. "We have a good relationship with Turkey, with Erdoğan. We're looking at it very seriously," the president stated, framing the deal in personal terms rather than strategic necessity.
Restarting F-35 deliveries would preserve high-skilled jobs in assembly and sustainment depots, but the administration must weigh whether Ankara's dual-allegiance posture justifies the transfer of crown-jewel combat systems.
The economic nationalist calculus remains murky. Reinstating Turkey's order would directly benefit the domestic industrial base—aerospace manufacturing supports roughly 500,000 American jobs—but critics note that Turkey's defense sector has aggressively pursued homegrown alternatives to reduce reliance on U.S. kit, undermining the long-term value of any co-production arrangement. The American taxpayer, already footing the bill for a program projected to cost $1.7 trillion over its lifecycle, is right to question whether exporting top-flight capability to a NATO member that flouts alliance solidarity serves the national interest.