The greatest set - back to military cooperation came when Britain U-turned on plans to make its next
generation F - 35 joint strike
fighter able to land on French
aircraft, which use a different launching system, due to costs.
The much older F - 16s, which did have large external fuel tanks, were still able to fly circles around the state - of - the - art
fighter, calling into question whether or not the next
generation aircraft is a worthy replacement at all, or merely an overpriced and over designed (the avionics alone require 24 million lines of code vs the F16's 135,000) boondoggle that the DOD can't undo.