There's also a related issue of the F-35, where the US isn't sharing the source code with partner countries. There's always the delightful possibility that your country and the US get into a tiff, or a competitor country is smart enough to reverse-engineer it, and suddenly your very expensive air force stops working. Makes it very difficult to justify pouring money into an increasingly expensive program.<p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/11/25/us-lockheed-fighter-exclusive-idUSTRE5AO01F20091125" rel="nofollow">http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/11/25/us-lockheed-fighte...</a>
The article acts like there's a chance that Boeing is in serious trouble, but the US government has programs to prevent the loss of defense manufacturing capabilities.<p>The status quo is, if a product is not needed in the US, but the manufacturing base to produce it is, to cover a potential major conflict, then the US sends foreign aid to another nation, who in return agree to buy our defense products. In the end, the government just wrote a direct check to a defense contractor to build a weapon for someone else, who probably didn't need it, but it shakes out as being 'foreign aid.' For a good example of this, check out how many tanks the Egyptian government has.
The F/A-18 has an old airframe, and is outclassed by every modern Russian and European plane... The only reason any of them sell is the US' political clout.
It sounds nice to blame the NSA, but Brazil was unlikely to buy the Boeing jets anyway. Richard Aboulafia wrote about this, how the Brazilian Air Force budget changes with economic times, their needs and lack of prior history with the more complex (and expensive) jets:<p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardaboulafia/2013/12/19/brazils-fighter-buy-that-nsa-narrative-is-probably-wrong/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardaboulafia/2013/12/19/braz...</a>
Not a good time for Boeing with the whole South Korea fiasco. I am really not fond of the US government picking the same company for both the F-35 and F-22. Of course, I still don't think the the F-35 specification was a good idea in the first place.<p>[edit] To explain how weird the world is, here is a agreement between Boeing and Saab <a href="http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_12_16_2013_p30-645781.xml" rel="nofollow">http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_...</a>
Its fascinating how British decryption of French diplomatic cables, which gave them deep insight into de Gaulle's position on Britain's entry to the Common Market, didn't give them a way to stop him then either. (Source: Spycatcher by Wright)<p>Reading the mail of those you negotiate with doesn't always give you a sure bet.