Portugal Weighs the F-35 Against the Eurofighter Typhoon: Why Lisbon Hesitates on US Jets

On sticker price the gap is smaller than the politics suggests. The F-35 Joint Program Office puts the average F-35A flyaway cost at $82.5 million for Lots 15 to 17, and the Lot 18 and 19 deal of September 2025 works out at about $82.1 million an airframe before a roughly $20.5 million engine, The Aviationist calculated. Spain’s December 2024 order for 25 Typhoons with engines and support is valued at €4.6 billion, Breaking Defense reported, about €184 million a jet, while Greece’s first 20 F-35s with support came to about $3.5 billion, VOA reported, roughly $175 million each.

Running costs favour the F-16 Portugal already has. The US Congressional Budget Office found in June 2025 that a seven-year-old F-35A is about as available as a 36-year-old F-16C/D, and that F-35A operating and support costs sit above the F-16’s and close to the F-15E’s. No comparable Typhoon figure exists, and the per-hour numbers circulating online spread too widely to print.

Capability is where the jets part. The F-35A carries four AIM-120 missiles internally, flies at Mach 1.6 with the AN/APG-81 radar and has a combat radius put at over 1,090 km, Army Recognition lists. The Typhoon is not stealthy, but it reaches Mach 2, hangs weapons on 13 external stations and is now getting the Captor-E electronically scanned radar that Germany’s 20 Tranche 5 jets will carry, Eunews reported. Airbus’s campaign manager, Ivan Gonzalez Exposito, framed Portugal’s needs as air policing, NATO quick reaction alert and guarding national waters rather than the deep strike he called the F-35’s primary purpose, Defence Industry Europe reported. Airbus will file an unsolicited bid in late October or early November with “public and private financing solutions” attached.

It depends on the mission. For first-day strikes against modern air defences the F-35 has no European rival; its stealth and sensor fusion are why the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece bought it, and Portugal would be the programme’s 21st country by Lockheed’s count.

For air policing and air-to-air work over the Atlantic, the Typhoon is a mature aircraft with a supply chain inside the EU. Airbus data show 613 Typhoons delivered and 761 ordered as of September 2025, Militarnyi reported. Its weak points are the lack of stealth and a radar only now catching up with the F-35’s. The F-35’s weak points are availability and a sustainment chain that runs through the United States, which is exactly what Melo pointed at in 2025. A small air force that mostly scrambles against Russian bombers can argue either way. One that expects to fly beside US forces on the first night of a war cannot.

The Netherlands flew its last F-16 sortie and declared full operational capability on the F-35 on the same day, 26 September 2024, with 52 jets ordered, Janes reported. Belgium has 34 F-35As under contract and wants 11 more built at Cameri in Italy, Breaking Defense reported. Greece signed for 20 in July 2024 while already flying Rafales. Switzerland is the cautionary case: in March 2026 its Federal Council trimmed a 36-jet order to about 30 after a US cost increase estimated at $610 million, Breaking Defense reported. A Typhoon win in Lisbon would be the first time a European F-16 operator replaced the jet with a European-built fighter.

The argument has moved from the aircraft to the supplier. Melo asked in 2025 whether Washington is a predictable one, before any other NATO F-16 operator did, and former defence minister João Gomes Cravinho said in September that an F-35 buy would leave Portugal “dependent on Washington for decades,” Air Data News reported. Rubio’s visit came in the week Washington sanctioned the International Criminal Court over European objections. Airbus is answering with money and jobs: financing to stretch the payment plan, a 2025 memorandum with the AED Cluster of Portuguese suppliers, The Aviationist reported, and a programme whose software and spares stay inside Europe. A loss here would give every European bid after it a precedent.