Joint NATO assets save money but limit national choice

Why not buy and operate support aircraft jointly through NATO or another multinational group?

Pooling can spread costs, but the discussion cautions that a national mission may lack some partners' support and therefore require nationally controlled aircraft.

The discussion illustrates limits on pooled support aircraft with a hypothetical repeat of the Falklands War. It asks whether aircraft jointly owned with a neutral country would remain available to Britain, using Spain and Portugal as examples within that scenario. A mixed fleet of shared and nationally controlled assets is proposed as a way to retain capacity for separate missions. Joint procurement is treated as a different source of difficulty, since partners can seek different specifications and competing industrial shares. Franco-German fighter cooperation is cited as an example of industrial disagreements. The overall argument is that cooperation can spread costs while leaving questions about access and workshare to be resolved.