Now something completely different: Earn Money With F-35s !
The Dutch government entered the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme as a junior level II partner and invested USD 800 million in the programme. It became known that the Netherlands have already received export royalty payments on F-35s exported to non-partner nations as part of their membership.
The royalties of the partners of the JSF programme (Norway, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Turkey, the Netherlands, Italy and Great Britain) were not made public before. Up to 2020, the export F-35 royalty payment to the Netherlands contained USD 13,7 million.
The Dutch Ministry of Defence reveals that sales to non-partner nations will generate additional payments of over USD 91 million in the near future. They calculated the first payment back into their treasury was larded covering just 53 Lightning IIs and sixty F135-PW-100 engine, with royalty payments amounting to USD 223,500 on each F-35A and USD 31,200 on each engine, for a total of USD 13,7 million.
By December 2020, it is expected that 77 F-35s and 84 F135 engines will have been delivered to non-partner countries, and further FMS deliveries to non-partner countries are planned for 2021 and later years, on which the Netherlands will receive their promised royalties.
Over 300 export aircraft and 300 engines are to be delivered and the accompanying royalties are expected to reach USD 79,4 million (USD 258,500 each) for the aircraft and a minimum of USD 12,2 million (USD 39,600 each) for the engines. So when this is completed, the Dutchies generated over USD 104 million in their JSF investments!
A report published by Defense-Aerospace added that incidentally, the increase in the number of export F-35s also means that the Dutch financial contribution to the Production, Sustainment, and Follow-On Development (PSFD) phase has increased to USD 221,1 million excluding VAT, up from USD 213 million for their original ordered 37 Lightning IIs. So the Pentagon’s F-35 Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programme to Belgium, Japan, Israel, Poland and South Korea (additional FMS sales are anticipated) will increase the royalties.
The sole Level I partner (UK) will even get more royalty payments, Level III partners as Australia, Denmark, Norway, Canada will generate lower royalty payments. It is not revealed what happened to Level III partner Turkey...
Back to the Netherlands... the Dutch technology industry revenue from the JSF programme is growing day-by-day, they were granted multiple contracts, and in 2019 these valued already a massive USD 363,3 million. The total value of orders (up to 2020) received by some 90 (25 from the beginning) companies and institutions in the JSF programme is estimated already 1,911 million euro (USD 1,1 billion) with thousands of jobs, not bad, especially when keeping in mind that the Dutch invested some 4,3 billion euro (in September 2013 USD 5,2 billion) for the first order of 37 aircraft and 1,1 billion euro (USD 1,3 billion) for the second order of nine aircraft.
The great thing about this news report is most often only the massive investments in such military programmes are reported in the media, and opposition parties in the government love to battle this, but scarcely the great benefits (the aforementioned generated money and a lot of jobs) are highlighted! And the F-35 programme is only running from 2001 onwards (the Level II and III partners jumped in in June 2002), with many years to come!