Finland’s First F-35A Takes Flight as NATO Expands Airpower on Russia’s Northern Border.

Finland’s first F-35A fighter, aircraft JF-501, has completed its inaugural flight from Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth plant, marking a visible milestone in the country’s HX fighter program. The debut pushes Finland closer to fielding a 64 jet fleet designed to anchor NATO air defense along the alliance’s expanding northern flank.

The Finnish Air Force announced on December 9, 2025, that Finland’s first F-35A multirole fighter, tail number JF-501, had completed its maiden flight from Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth facility in Texas. The aircraft, flown by a company test pilot, marks the transition of Helsinki’s HX fighter program from contract phase to metal in the air, and is the opening act of a 64-jet fleet that will replace the Finnish Air Force’s F/A-18C/D Hornets between 2025 and 2030.
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Finland's F-35A brings fifth-generation stealth, long-range sensor fusion, and advanced electronic warfare to the Nordic theatre, offering precision strike, air superiority, and seamless NATO interoperability while operating from dispersed highway bases in harsh Arctic conditions (Picture source: Lockheed Martin).

Finland is buying one of the most modern versions of the F-35A. All 64 aircraft will be delivered with the latest Technical Refresh 3 hardware, the computing baseline for Block 4, which expands processing power, electronic warfare performance, and weapons integration. The F-35A combines a low-observable airframe with the AN/APG-81 AESA radar, the AN/ASQ-239 electronic warfare suite, and a full 360-degree sensor fusion architecture, effectively turning the jet into an airborne intelligence and targeting node as much as a fighter. For Finland, that means stealthy surveillance deep into the Kola Peninsula and the Baltic approaches, while remaining connected to NATO assets through Link 16 and the platform’s own secure datalinks.

The weapons package reflects a long-term, high-end threat focus. Finnish F-35s are planned to carry AMRAAM and AIM-9X for air superiority, plus SDB I and II, JDAM family guided bombs, and JASSM-ER for deep strike, with the Joint Strike Missile requested as a future maritime strike option. Block 4 and TR-3 are designed to open the door to even more advanced standoff munitions, such as the AARGM-ER anti-radiation missile, giving future Finnish governments the option to turn the fleet into a potent SEAD and coastal defence asset if required.

On the financial side, Finland signed the F-35 agreement on February 11, 2022. The core procurement of 64 Block 4-capable F-35A aircraft, training, weapons, and support is valued at approximately 8.3 to 8.4 billion euros, within a fixed overall HX program envelope of approximately 10 billion euros, which the State Treasury subsequently hedged against dollar exchange rate risk. That figure makes the F-35 acquisition the largest public purchase in Finnish history. Academic assessments describe the move as a generational shift in Finland’s airpower, underpinned by a weapons mix tailored for long-range precision strike and air defence in the High North.

Industrial participation is intense. Offset arrangements worth roughly 30% of the main contract will see Patria assemble Pratt and Whitney F135 engines in Finland and later maintain them for regional users, while Finnish firms produce at least 400 sets of forward fuselage structures and landing gear doors for the global F-35 supply chain. This goes well beyond national fleet needs and is intended to anchor thousands of high-skilled aerospace jobs in Finland well into the 2030s.

Strategically, the F-35 arrives just as Finland shifts from a non-aligned status to a NATO frontline state. Helsinki’s accession to NATO in 2023 added roughly 1,340 kilometres of direct alliance border with Russia and placed Finnish territory at the heart of the new northeastern flank, linking the Baltic Sea to the Arctic. Russian military aircraft have already violated Finnish airspace multiple times since the war in Ukraine began, underlining the need for rapid reaction and credible air denial across a sparsely populated, forested battlespace. The F-35’s range, sensors, and data links are designed to plug directly into NATO’s integrated air and missile defence network, sharing targeting data with allied F-35s, AWACS, ground-based radars, and naval assets in real time.

Finland intends to base its F-35s with the Lapland Air Wing at Rovaniemi and the Karelia Air Wing at Rissala, both close to key Russian approach corridors. The aircraft will also inherit Finland’s famous dispersed operations doctrine using road bases and highway strips. Recent BAANA exercises, where U.S. F-35s landed on Finnish highways, showed how fifth-generation fighters can be integrated into that concept; U.S. Air Forces in Europe commander Gen James Hecker called the highway landing proof of a growing relationship and close interoperability with Finnish forces.

Within NATO, Finland joins a fast-growing F-35 club that already includes the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Poland, and Germany, with Greece, the Czech Republic, and Romania also on contract. This creates a de facto fifth-generation belt from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, using a common aircraft, training system, and logistics architecture. The same stealth jet that patrols Lapland can deploy for Baltic Air Policing or train in combined packages with Belgian or Dutch F-35s, simplifying planning and significantly complicating Russian air defence calculus.

Finland’s choice also sits in a crowded field of Western fighters. The HX competition pitted the F-35A against Boeing’s F/A-18E/F and EA-18G package, Dassault’s Rafale F4, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and Saab’s Gripen E with GlobalEye AEW support. Helsinki’s evaluation concluded that the F-35 ranked first or joint first in all mission sets and offered the best long-term upgrade path and cost effectiveness per combat effect, despite a higher sticker price and sustainment complexity than some rivals. Rafale and Typhoon remain formidable 4.5 generation designs with powerful kinematics and mature weapons, and Gripen E offered an attractive dispersed operations concept, but none matched the combination of low observability, deep sensor fusion, and NATO-wide interoperability that Finland judged essential on a contested northern flank.