Portugal looks to be backing out of plans to purchase the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as a result of US President Donald Trump’s lack of commitment or solidarity with Europe and NATO.
The Portuguese Air Force had previously indicated that the F-35 was the aircraft of choice to replace its fleet of around 28 Lockheed Martin F-16AM/BM fighters, but in an interview with Portuguese national newspaper Público on 13 March 2025, Portuguese Defence Minister Nuno Melo, who is also leader of Portugal’s CDS – People’s Party, appeared to indicate otherwise.
“The F-16s are at the end of their cycle and we will have to think about their replacement. However, we cannot ignore the geopolitical environment in our choices,” he said. “The recent position of the United States, in the context of NATO and in the international geostrategic plan, must make us think about the best options, because the predictability of our allies is a greater asset to take into account. We must believe that, in all circumstances, these allies will be on our side.”
With regard to replacement options for Portugal’s F-16s, Melo said, “There are several options that must be considered, particularly in the context of European production and also taking into account the return that these options may have on the Portuguese economy.”
Potential European solutions would be the Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon or Saab Gripen.
Portugal had not thus far been part of the F-35 programme and had not officially presented a Foreign Military Sales case to the US government to join it. Nevertheless, it had seemed a logical progression, as with so many other European F-16 users, to acquire F-35s.
While lambasting European nations for not spending enough on defence – a situation that has vastly changed in light of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine – Trump has caused much consternation in Europe by equivocating over the US commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty’s Article 5, which commits each member state to consider an armed attack against one member state to be an armed attack against them all.
Trump has also troubled Europe by not standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine in light of the Russian invasion, instead displaying an almost purely transactional attitude to securing peace in Ukraine.
Trump has additionally doubled down in his first-term aspiration to acquire Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, much to the consternation of both the Danes and the Greenlanders. On 13 March, as Trump received NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte for a visit to the White House, Trump again asserted of his plans for annexing Greenland, “I think it will happen. We need that for international security.” He then tried to co-opt Rutte into the plans by saying he thought the NATO secretary general would play an “instrumental” role. For his part, Rutte stepped back from the argument, stating that he did not “want to drag NATO” into the discussion.
