JSF: It's All About the Benjamins

It's the Dutch, so it would actually be Guilder, or Euro, Meijer, or Snip, or Geeltje, but in any case, the the kickback scheme that has the Netherlands as a JSF customer is now up for negotiation.

Basically, Dutch industry got a lot of offsets as a part of the F-35 deal, and the Dutch government is supposed to get a percentage of that revenue back from the defense contractors.

The problem is that the deal is not fully fleshed out, and the government is now asking for 10.3% of all revenue JSF related orders through 2053 as opposed to their original figure of 3.5%, because the falling US dollar will reduce public revenues in this scheme.

This may explain why the government is going through the charade of reexamining the procurement decision on the JSF, asking to look at the Eurofighter Typhoon (refused to respond with proposal), Dassault Rafale (Refused to respond with proposal), and SAAB Gripen.

They are using it as a lever to get more money out of their private defense contractors.