A few years ago, an American friend of mine cocked an eye at me sceptically when I raised the issue of Australia’s air force buying F-22 Raptors from the United States. ‘It won’t happen,’ he said flatly. ‘The F-22 incorporates a lot of US-only technology. Re-engineering it so that we could export the aircraft would cost a lot of money, and the export customers would have to pay for that.’

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