One answer lies in Italy, where a growing number of nations are lining up to use an unlikely location built deep underground in the 1930s by the government of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Lurking under woodland in Fornovo Taro near Parma lies a system of five massive, drum-shaped cisterns which once held aviation fuel as well as 2km of connecting passageways, all designed to withstand enemy bombing.

“Gaza has accelerated the use of this place like this – despite their technology, the Israelis were not ready for fighting in tunnels,” said a manager at the site, who spoke to Defense News but declined to be named due to company policy.

Israel is among 17 national customers who have now trained at the privately run site known as La Carona, with other special forces units arriving from countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Poland, Greece and Turkey.

The U.S. Green Berets have also used the site as does a dedicated Italian army underground fighting unit created by the Italian army Folgore paratrooper brigade.

After resisting 150 bombing runs by the Allies in the Second World War, the cisterns continued to be used by the Italian Air Force to hold aviation fuel until 2000 when the site was abandoned and the fuel drained out.

In 2020 the La Carona was purchased and reopened for training by its current owners.

“We saw the site and decided it would be perfect for special forces training,” said the manager.

The cylindrical tanks, which are supported by concrete columns, measure around 20 meters in diameter by seven meters in height and are linked by tunnels which once channelled fuel between them. Another 1km long tunnel once carried fuel to a nearby train station.

Special forces entering the tunnels now engage in simulated combat.

The space recreates the limitations of real tunnel fighting – from darkness, to limited radio use to no GPS. A control room allows trainers to generate sound, including the noise of explosions, as well as smoke and lighting.

Robot canines and real dogs, as well as drones that can function without GPS can all be introduced.

“The key ability to learn here is how to map underground spaces,” said the manager.

Combat in tunnels grabbed the headlines as the Israel Defense Forces entered the so-called Gaza Metro – a system of tunnels thought to total hundreds of miles – when it sought out hostages taken during the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

A year earlier, Ukrainian forces held out for weeks against Russian attacks in the labyrinth of underground tunnels under the Azovstal iron and steel works in Mariupol, which was described as a ‘fortress within a city’.

“Most of the world’s population now lives in an urban setting and war is increasingly fought in cities. Underground combat can make the difference,” said the manager.

The request to land at Sigonella air base in Sicily was issued to Italian authorities after the aircraft had already taken off from the U.S., Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported on Tuesday.

Italy has a longstanding deal with the U.S. to allow it to use Sigonella for regular military flights, while permission for use of the base by flights not covered by the agreement must be granted by the Italian parliament.

In a speech to parliament this month, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said, “The bases used by the U.S. in Italy derive from agreements signed in 1954 and which have been updated since then by various governments. According to those agreements there are technical authorizations when it comes to logistics and non-kinetic operations that do not involve, put simply, bombing.”

She added that for any other kind of use of bases, “it depends on parliament.”

Since permission to land was requested by the U.S. after the jets took off from the United States, there was no time for such authorization to be obtained, the source said.

A statement issued by Meloni’s office on Tuesday said, “Every request is examined attentively, case by case, as has always happened in the past. There are no crises or frictions with international partners. Relations with the U.S., specifically, are solid and characterized by full and loyal cooperation.”

The refusal does however come in the wake of growing unease over the Iran war in the Italian government led by Meloni, who has previously positioned herself as a faithful ally to American President Donald Trump in Europe.

Meloni is playing a balancing act since she is keen not to alienate the majority of Italian voters who oppose the Iran war.

“We are not at war and we do not want to enter the war,” Meloni told Italy’s parliament earlier this month. She has also called the U.S. attack on Iran “outside the perimeter of international law.”

Spain has previously denied use of its bases to U.S. jets heading to Iran, incurring the anger of President Trump, who threatened to cut trade with Spain.

On Monday, Spain went further, closing its airspace to U.S. aircraft involved in the Iran war.

“Neither the bases are authorized, nor, of course, is the use of Spanish airspace authorized for any actions related to the war in Iran,” Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said, adding the war was ”profoundly illegal and profoundly unjust.”

“We’re reshaping how we build and field the Fleet, working with industry to deliver warfighting advantage, beginning with a strategic shift away from the Constellation-class frigate program,” Navy Secretary John C. Phelan said in a post on X.

Phelan said that four ships under contract but yet to be built by Fincantieri would now be cancelled.

“The navy and our industry partners have reached a comprehensive framework that terminates for the Navy’s convenience the last four ships of the class which have not begun construction,” he said.

“We greatly value the shipbuilders of Michigan and Wisconsin. While work continues on the first two ships those ships remain under review as we work through this strategic shift. Keeping this critical workforce employed and the yard viable for future navy shipbuilding is of foremost concern,” he added.

Italian shipyard Fincantieri won the contract to build the frigates in 2020 at its Marinette Marine yard in Wisconsin, with the US Navy eyeing an eventual order of 20 ships.

The baseline design was Fincantieri’s FREMM frigate, which is already in service with the French and Italian navies among others. The U.S. Navy originally reported “basic and functional designs” were 88% complete.

But a March report by the United States Government Accountability Office claimed the U.S. Navy proceeded to order numerous design changes, meaning that five years on, the program was only 70% complete and three years late.

“As a result of these changes, in part, the frigate now bears little resemblance to the parent design that the Navy touted as a built-in, risk reduction measure for the program in 2020,” the report stated.

“Now, in 2025, the ongoing redesign has driven weight growth at levels that exceed available tolerances. Already the Navy is considering a reduction in the frigate’s speed requirement as one potential way, among others, to resolve this weight growth,” the report added.

In his statement on Tuesday, Phelan said, “The facts are clear. It is time to deliver the ship our warfighters need at a pace that matches the threat environment, not the comfort level of the bureaucracy.”

In a statement, Fincantieri said it expected to receive new orders for “amphibious, icebreaking and other special mission” ships to compensate for lost business.

“On top of the aforementioned award of future orders, in order to cover the above, the agreement indemnifies Fincantieri Marine Group, on existing economic commitments and industrial impacts through measures provided by the U.S. Navy, as a result of the contractual decision made for its own convenience,” the firm said.

Fincantieri said it has invested more than $800 million in its four U.S. shipyards: Marinette, Green Bay, Sturgeon Bay, and Jacksonville, and now employs 3,750 staff in the United States.

George Moutafis, CEO of Fincantieri Marine Group, said, “Our investments in the U.S. shipyards are a testament to our long-term vision: to be a cornerstone of the U.S. maritime industrial base and a driving force to sustain the momentum of the national shipbuilding renaissance, the American shipbuilding renaissance.”

Sources in Italy told Defense News the work on the six frigates had been worth $5.5 billion. Continuing work on the first two, plus indemnities agreed with the U.S. government, would be worth $3 billion, while new orders planned would be worth $2 billion.

Phelan’s decision to truncate the Constellation program was praised by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

“I commend (the Navy secretary) for canceling the troubled Constellation-class frigate program — a tough but vital call. Biden-era design changes derailed the contractor, but Fincantieri Marinette Marine will remain key to our shipbuilding future. This is a clear signal that Navy program management is being fixed and accountability restored. Stronger Navy ahead!”

In his statement, Phelan added, “The Navy needs ships and looks forward to building them in every shipyard that can. A key factor in this decision is the need to grow the fleet faster to meet tomorrow’s threats. This framework puts the Navy on a path to more rapidly construct new classes of ships and deliver the capability our warfighters need in greater numbers on a more urgent timeline.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication to specify the value of the initial Constellation contract: $5.5 billion.

WASHINGTON and ROME — Germany’s promise early this year to send tanks to Ukraine marked the country’s latest concession and provided a cap to the gradual escalation in the kind of equipment allies were supplying.

Indeed, when Russia invaded Ukraine last February, its allies resisted pleas for offensive aid and followed a narrow definition of protective equipment. In Berlin, leaders initially shied away from aid that didn’t fit the German definition of “defensive.”

That’s changed, with Germany now pledging to deliver Leopard 2 battle tanks and approving other countries’ requests to follow suit. Chancellor Olaf Scholz also recently authorized supplying infantry fighting vehicles to help push Russian forces out of occupied Ukraine.

The evolving approach fits a conflict as fluid as it is unpredictable.

Now, a collection of Western tank-type vehicles is slated to arrive on the front lines this spring, with training already underway in donor countries. The vehicles carry the hope of enabling battlefield wins for Ukrainian forces that will lead to some kind of war-ending scenario — if the weapons arrive in time.

Scholz has told Tagesspiegel newspaper he wants Russian President Vladimir Putin to answer one question: “How is the world getting out of this terrible situation?”

Defense News spoke with national security analysts, lawmakers and retired officials, asking each how the conflict could end.

Their answers are glum: The war will be expensive, cost lives and likely last at least a few years — or even become interminable. It will tax the American and European defense industries, especially when it comes to munitions, and could cause economic ruin in Russia. All this while the possibility of nuclear escalation remains.

And they said winning will depend on a Congress with the resolve to ensure continued support to Ukraine. But even then, the very concept of victory may be inaccurate, they warned.

“For this year, it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all — every inch of Ukraine or Russian-occupied Ukraine,” Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters during a visit to Germany last month. “That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but it’d be very, very difficult.”

Milley has insisted the war will likely end at the negotiating table — at some point. Officials and experts expect a bloody spring, as Russia sends new conscripts to the front line and Ukraine tries to repel an offensive while mounting its own.

As the war enters its second year, the spigot of military aid is still gushing. But industrial capacities are spotty, and nations have started to scrutinize how much equipment they can spare while maintaining their own self-defense requirements and that of NATO.

At the same time, election season in the United States — Ukraine’s most important backer — stands to spur arguments that a war in Europe of unknown duration is a costly nuisance for America.

How long a war?

Asked about the likely duration of the Ukraine war, analysts in the United States and Europe made similar predictions, with timelines running from months to years to “indefinite.”

Yohann Michel, a research analyst in Berlin with the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, anticipates “long months” ahead, while Michael Kofman, the research program director in the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses in Washington, expects additional years of fighting.

“Wars typically tend to go on longer than people expect or hope, but especially interstate conflicts of this length,” Kofman said. “History tells us that wars which go on this long … are likely to become protracted, lasting several years.”

Perhaps Italian analyst Lucio Caracciolo was the most pessimistic of all. “This war will last indefinitely, with long pauses for cease-fires,” he said.

“It will only stop when Ukraine or Russia or both collapse, since for both sides this is a matter of life or death,” added Caracciolo, the editor of Italian geopolitics publication Limes.

Peter Roberts, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said there are different ways to define the end of a war: “the end of the kinetic phase” versus “the end of a Georgia-style frozen conflict or a Korea-like situation that runs for years.”

“I would love to think the kinetic phase could end in 2023, but I suspect we could be looking at another three years with this scale of fighting,” Roberts said.

Michel added there are as-yet-unknown factors that will determine the end of the conflict.

“Who will be first to launch the next offense? What role will the weather play?” he wondered. “There is the problem of ammunition — the first side to have a shortage will be in trouble. While there has been no real European program to increase production, will Russian stocks be replenished by China?”

And long, exhaustive fighting carries its own risks, according to Benjamin Jensen, a war gaming expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That’s because the longer conflicts last, the more they exhaust finite resources and, hence, the parties are more willing to gamble.

“Even technologically advanced, wealthy states in the Middle East eventually reached a point where they’re lobbing missiles at civilian cities, openly using chemical weapons and fighting in waves — just people rushing across the field getting shot at,” Jensen said.

Either side may act boldly if it winds up on the ropes and needs an exit strategy. Ukraine, Jensen suggested, might try a spectacular special operation to assassinate a Kremlin official, or Russia could decide to use — or simply test — nuclear weapons.

In Jensen’s view, even the collapse of Russia’s conventional force or a traditional Ukrainian victory may not mean the war is over; either could lead to nuclear escalation by Russia.

On the offensive this spring

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine without frozen ground to support their armored vehicles, which meant they had to stick to roads, where they stood out as easy targets.

But this winter, they’re expected to launch attacks across open plains, which would be harder to defeat, said Daniel Rice, a former U.S. Army captain who last year became a special adviser to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander of the Ukrainian military.

“The worry is that a large Russian offensive action could punch through, and there’s a lot of worry they could take Kyiv,” said Rice, now president of the Thayer Leadership consulting group in West Point, New York. “People are waking up to the reality that you need to give offensive weapons to end this war — at least to win it.”

The challenge now is training and equipping an armored force big enough and sophisticated enough to envelop Russia’s fighting force.

Ukrainian soldiers will have to learn how to operate and sustain the latest batch of military aid, which includes Marder and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles from Germany and the United States, as well as Challenger 2, Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks from the U.K., Germany and the U.S., respectively. Also in the mix is a pledge from France to ship AMX-10 RC light, wheeled tanks.

“It’s a lot to do in a short period of time,” Rice said. “Just because they have just the right vehicles doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to take a major future offensive action. But … these Ukrainians have surprised the world every time.”

Retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, a former commander of the U.S. Army’s maneuver warfare school at Fort Benning, Georgia, said Western upgrades offer Ukraine the chance to dominate the close fight with Russian adversaries and conclude the tactical fighting to its advantage.

Russian forces are already trying to slow down tanks in Ukraine with mines, trenches, and pyramidical, concrete “dragon’s teeth,” a type of fortification not seen in combat since World War II. Ukrainian forces, once equipped and trained for combined arms warfare and tank tactics, will be “designed to punch a hole through a defensive network,” Donahoe predicted.

But the sizable swaths of terrain Ukraine wants to liberate will take time, and to even build the necessary forces will take six months, Donahoe estimated.

The recent arms donations — Kyiv still wants fighter aircraft and long-range tactical missiles — are predicated on the assumption they’ll force Moscow to end its invasion and begin negotiations because military costs are too high. That objective has coexisted with an expectation that Putin’s government will probably never stop fighting, as losing the war could spell the end to his political power.

Pressure points

In the course of the past year, Putin’s domestic propaganda strategy has morphed from a message of “fight the Nazis” in Ukraine to “fight the West” there, said Stefan Meister, a Russia and Eastern Europe expert at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations. “The narrative is the great struggle of the Cold War,” he said, a framing that has helped to attract new recruits.

And the near-total control of information by the government is making dissent difficult. “Those who are against the war have left, and those who remain are adapting,” Meister said.

Past attempts to squeeze the will for war out of Moscow economically also didn’t yield the immediate results for which experts hoped. Cracks may begin to appear this year, however.

“The consensus is that ordinary Russians will start feeling it this year,” said Charles Lichfield, an economics and sanctions analyst at the Washington-based Atlantic Council. “But Russians have a huge degree of tolerance for economic pain.”

Moscow has proved resourceful when it comes to building autonomy into critical goods, Lichfield explained. For example, the tactic of repurposing dishwasher electronics for weapons, mocked in the West as a sign of desperation, probably means “somebody thought about that from the beginning,” he said.

One area to watch is Russia’s payment of pensions. An inability to do so could foster economic discontent capable of turning public opinion against the war, Lichfield told Defense News.

“It would have to get pretty bad for the Russians to get there,” he said, adding that there’s no way of knowing how many reserves the government stashed away after years of fat checks from energy sales.

After imposing sanctions and export controls, Lichfield expects the West’s latest economic pressure point — oil price caps — to yield results because the Russian economy is so tightly linked to the energy market.

Which weapons will Washington send?

The United States, as Ukraine’s most important military supporter, remains the center of gravity when it comes to an eventual outcome for the conflict. American leadership has so far been largely united in their support for Kyiv.

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, expects the war to end at the negotiating table, but said serious diplomacy hasn’t begun because Putin is still clinging to “maximalist” goals.

“The ultimate end to this is the Ukrainians take back as much pre-Feb. 24 territory as they can get, force Putin to the bargaining table, and then ultimately Ukraine would have to compromise somewhat on issues like Crimea and portions of the east and arrange for solid security guarantees going forward,” Smith told Defense News in a phone interview.

“Right now, the Russians are talking about a major offensive in the next four months,” he added. “It seems like the Russians are at least thinking that they have some possibility of succeeding in that effort. I am skeptical.”

For its part, the Biden administration has started deliberations around the thorny question of whether helping Ukraine should entail retaking Crimea, which Russia seized and then annexed in 2014.

“That would be an extraordinarily risky thing to do,” Smith said. “But it’s important to have those conversations. And from what I understand, high levels of our government have talked about it.”

Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the former National Security Council director for European affairs in the Obama administration, said he “would not encourage Ukraine to seek to reassert control over Crimea by force, simply because the escalation risks are very high.”

“Crimea is of considerable strategic importance to Russia,” Kupchan told Defense News. “It looms large historically. It’s difficult for me to imagine that the Russians would accept complete defeat and expulsion from Crimea.”

But some on Capitol Hill are more bullish about lining up behind President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s goal of fully restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty over its territory.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., visited Ukraine in January and subsequently told Defense News at a news conference that “the American military has consistently underestimated the Ukrainian fighting ability.”

“Everything I have come to learn about the will and determination of the Ukrainians leads me to conclude retaking Crimea is within reach, and they need the artillery that will enable hitting targets — the sites of missiles destroying infrastructure in Ukraine,” he said.

Blumenthal has joined other lawmakers — particularly pro-Ukraine Republicans — in pushing President Joe Biden to give Zelenskyy most of the weapons he requested, including long-range ATACMS missiles and F-16 fighter aircraft.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also called for sending long-range missiles to Ukraine alongside advanced Gray Eagle and Reaper drones.

“We should deliver these assets quickly to make an immediate difference on the battlefield,” Wicker said on the Senate floor in January. “In concert with our allies, this approach of ‘more, better, faster’ would give the Ukrainians a real shot at victory.”

While the Biden administration has voiced concerns that sending ATACMS to Ukraine could enable strikes into Russia, potentially escalating the war into a broader conflict with NATO, the Ukrainians could use those long-range missiles to strike Russian launch points on their own territory — including in Crimea.

Smith indicated he disagrees with the Biden administration’s decision not to send long-range missiles, noting every Ukrainian official assured him they would not use them to attack Russia.

But Smith also said ATACMS producer Lockheed Martin no longer makes the missiles, and the U.S. military still needs them in its stockpiles.

“We’re looking at a variety of different options there,” he said. “They’re not currently being made, so it is legitimately a question of readiness on our part and whether we’d have enough to spare. There are discussions about other longer-range munitions.”

The Biden administration earlier this month announced it is sending Ukraine the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb. The GLSDB has a range of up to 93 miles, doubling Ukraine’s strike range. However, that still falls short of the ATACMS, which would allow Ukraine to strike Russian targets about 190 miles away.

The Pentagon declined to say whether the GLSDB will be used to attack Russian targets in Crimea. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington told Defense News that Ukraine would not strike Russian territory with longer-range weapons pledged by the United States.

Future funding

Depending on how long the war lasts, it remains far from certain whether lawmakers will keep funding Ukraine aid packages. Congress provided more than $100 billion in aid to Kyiv since Russia invaded last year, including $61.4 billion in military aid.

The undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, told the Senate in January the Biden administration still expects the $45 billion Ukraine aid package Congress passed in December to last through the end of this fiscal year. But the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Celeste Wallander, warned at the hearing that the current funding level “does not preclude” the administration from needing to request more assistance before the end of September.

While the bipartisan majority of lawmakers support arming Kyiv, 57 Republicans voted against a $40 billion emergency aid supplemental in May. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., made several concessions to those Ukraine aid skeptics to secure the votes to win his protracted speakership battle.

He agreed to a House rules change that would allow any member to initiate a vote to remove him as speaker, forcing him to tread carefully even on issues that enjoy majority Republican support — such as Ukraine assistance.

It took 15 votes for McCarthy to secure the position, after which he appointed three Republicans who oppose Ukraine aid — Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Chip Roy of Texas — to the Rules Committee, which controls legislation and debate on the House floor.

But another McCarthy concession — a procedure allowing 218 members to force a House floor vote on any bill — could present an opportunity for pro-Ukraine Republicans and Democrats to pass additional funding for Kyiv.

Still, the political dynamics may become more complicated in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, as some prominent Ukraine aid opponents, including former President Donald Trump and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, have already thrown their hats into the ring or are reportedly considering doing so.

Making weapons

One key question that could determine the war’s end game is how long Ukraine’s backers can keep up their arms donations to Kyiv.

“There’s no such thing as infinite resources,” said Jensen, the CSIS analyst. “Heaven forbid this goes on another year, two years. At some point the fighting will exhaust even the entirety of the Western world’s support for Ukraine.”

While defense spending in the United States and Europe is trending upward, in large part because of Russia’s attack, industrial capacity to crank out weapons and ammunition has emerged as a bottleneck.

In response, companies on both sides of the Atlantic announced plans to restart production lines for artillery shells and other weapons considered somewhat arcane until recently.

Wicker said the fiscal 2023 government funding and defense authorization bills include money to expand munitions manufacturing, “doubling and even tripling production capabilities for weapons like 155mm shells, [anti-tank] Javelins and [the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System].”

Still, it’s an open question whether the U.S. will be able to indefinitely continue its current level of support, said Mark Cancian, a CSIS senior adviser who has studied the volumes of artillery used in the war.

“They’re going through it at phenomenal rates,” he said of the Ukrainian military firing artillery munitions. “The U.S. bins are very low. We’re going to increase production substantially, but it’ll still be way below what the Ukrainians are using.”

The scene at Amendola air base would have been unremarkable except the mechanic was from the Dutch air force, and was part of a bid to show how F-35 operators can work on each other’s aircraft to save cash, increase efficiencies and show Moscow how united they are.

“There might be times when a U.S. F-35 has to divert to another air force’s base, or plans to, and we are trying to make them interoperable so any F-35 nation can work on any F-35 no matter where it comes from – and not just refuel it but re-arm it as well,” said Gen. James Hecker, the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa, who was at the meeting.

The conference at Amendola, which coincided with Falcon Strike 2022, an exercise involving Italian, Dutch and American F-35s, brought together representatives from the surging number of F-35 customers including Finland, Poland, Belgium, Israel, the U.S., Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, the U.K. and Canada.

Italian air force chief Gen. Luca Goretti said shared maintenance was high on the agenda, claiming, “The standardization process in Europe is intense.”

Goretti said that if he wanted to deploy Italian F-35s to the Netherlands, he would currently need to send a back-up team of 100.

“But if we are doing cross servicing I can deploy crew chiefs,” he said, adding, “That means my deployment cell is 30 to 50 guys. The rest is managed by (the Dutch). And that is saving money.”

That means harmonizing maintenance procedures, a task that European users of the Tornado and Eurofighter have previously managed.

Italy is also hoping that pooling maintenance will encourage users to send jets to its fledgeling F-35 maintenance hub at Cameri air base in northern Italy, which has hitherto focused on assembling F-35s for European customers.

Italy has rolled 16 F-35A’s and five B’s off the line so far, while the Dutch – after getting their first nine jets assembled in the United States – have had the remainder of its 32 deliveries to date assembled at Cameri, and will receive another 14 from the line by 2024.

Dutch air force chief Lt. Gen. Dennis Luyt said he would be using Cameri for maintenance services in the future after rating the assembly work at the base.

“We always said if our Italian friends can build a Ferrari they can probably build an F-35 and we have been really impressed by Cameri,” he said. “We are very happy with the aircraft we are receiving. It is important we have places in Europe where we can not only build but also maintain them,” he added.

Goretti said sharing maintenance was also a signal of unity in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

“We are proving to our friends in Moscow that we are all united and doing the same job. This is a very strong message,” he said.

That message has been also boosted by the sheer number of F-35s now being purchased by NATO members, with the war in Ukraine pushing sales.

“The Ukraine war has driven home the value of air supremacy, and more nations see that,” said Luyt.

Hecker said that by 2034 he expected to see just over 600 F-35s flying in Europe, up from around 140 ordered today.

“If we get to 600 F-35s in Europe, that’s pretty powerful and sends out a strong message to any opponent of NATO,” he said.

The U.S. general added, “When you look at Ukraine, neither country has been able to get air superiority and we see what the result is – several hundreds of thousands of casualties in less than a year. If you compare that to the number of casualties we had in twenty years in Afghanistan it just blows it out of the water.”

He said, “So it really shows the importance of air superiority. The F-35 is going to help us gain and maintain that air superiority should we have to go to war with somebody else.”

The DRS-led T-X team retains the key partners from the Raytheon-Leonardo venture. Leonardo DRS will be supported by CAE USA in the design and development of the T-100 ground-based training system (GBTS), the firm said. Honeywell will also provide twin F124 turbofan propulsion engines.

“Leonardo has experience in building aircraft overseas, so they will be lead on how this all works,” DRS spokesman Mike Mount said. “DRS will use its position as a prime to assist in multiple pieces of this process,” including program management, quality assurance and financial oversight.

A Leonardo news release stated that the T-100 will be a “U.S.-based program that will bring significant economic benefits to the country through a newly established and skilled U.S. work force.”

In a phone call with Defense News, Mike Mount elaborated that the T-100 will contain at least 50 percent U.S. content, including the Honeywell engines. The company also plans to build a new plant in the United States to manufacture the aircraft and conduct structural and final assembly.

The Raytheon-Leonardo partnership previously had planned to conduct final assembly of the aircraft in a newly built final-assembly and check-out facility in Meridian, Mississippi.  While structural assembly would take place in Italy, final assembly and at least 70 percent of the T-100 training system — including ground-based systems — would be built in the United States, a Raytheon spokesman said at the time.

Sources told Defense News last month that the Leonardo-Raytheon partnership broke down after Leonardo resisted Raytheon’s pressure to lower the price of the jet, pressure which increased as the competitiveness of Boeing’s offer in the T-X program became more evident.

Shortly after Leonardo announced its return to the T-X competition, CAE released a statement.

“CAE has been Leonardo’s long-time partner on the M-346 platform, and we have supported providing the ground-based training systems to all the customers currently operating this advanced lead-in fighter trainer,” the company said. “We are committed to continuing to support Leonardo on the T-X pursuit, and look forward to providing the U.S. Air Force with an affordable, low-risk and proven integrated training solution.”

Boeing has teamed with Saab to offer a clean-sheet design. The other main remaining competitor is Lockheed Martin, which is offering the T-50 with Korean Aerospace Industries. However, several spoiler candidates also have entered the fray, including Sierra Nevada and TAI’s “Freedom Trainer.” There’s also the “Javelin,” created by Stavatti Aerospace, which has never produced a military airplane.

Northrop Grumman, teamed with BAE Systems, pulled out of the T-X program on Feb. 1 after deciding its clean-sheet trainer was not competitive enough.

The Air Force plans to buy 350 T-X aircraft and expects to down-select to a single vendor this year.

Europe’s stalled efforts to launch a common military capability, which have seen battlegroups planned but never set up, got a shot in the arm in June when the UK — traditionally an obstacle to an army under the European Union — voted to leave the EU.

“Their exit frees up a lot of energy because they blocked everything,” an Italian defense source said.

The leaders of France and Germany discussed the EU military at an Aug. 22 meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on an Italian aircraft carrier, which was followed by a meeting of defense ministers from the three countries in Paris on Sept. 5.

A confidential draft document circulated by Italy to its partners calls for “fiscal and financial incentives to support new EU cooperative programs for development and joint purchases of equipment and infrastructure supporting the (EU’s) Common Security and Defense Policy.”

The Italian source said the proposal encompassed different ideas, including giving defense ministries and EU defense firms access to financing from the EU Investment Bank and the EU Fund for Strategic Investments.

The Italians have also proposed that an EU investment program specifically focused on defense programs be created.

Another proposal in the document is for the scrapping of sales tax on procurement of EU defense programs, the Italian source said.

Italian officials are also promoting the idea of exempting defense spending from national budget deficit calculations, which would allow states to ramp up defense spending without fear of increasing budget deficits.

France, which has long been under pressure from the EU to cut its budget deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product, has already floated the idea. The European Commission granted France in 2015 a two-year extension to meet that budget deficit target.

But Paris is unlikely to win approval from the European Commission on that change in accounting rules, said Francois Géré, chairman of the think tank Institut Français d’Analyse Stratégique.

Turning to capabilities, Italian planners are also suggesting that countries bring to the table their best strengths to form an EU military capability. Italian officials see Italy as excelling in pilot training while France and Germany boast healthy air transport capabilities.

The Italian source said that German officials at the meeting in Paris were keen to stress the need for an EU military headquarters. “That is their big thing,” he said. “The French seemed to agree on all points.”

The Italians are also looking for more forums to be set up for discussions on defense in Europe. The source noted that the European parliament lacks a defense commission.

Planning for the European Operation Sofia, which involves EU naval vessels tracking people smugglers in the Mediterranean, was arranged not by national defense ministries but by foreign ministries, he added.

Italy has shared its proposals with Germany and France, adding in the document that any initiatives can be supported as first by a few states, in the hope that others sign up later.

To push their case, Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti and Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni published a co-written article in French daily Le Monde in August, in which they proposed a “Schengen for Defense”, a reference to the so-called Schengen zone within which passport-free travel is allowed between European states.

Rome is also forwarding proposals to Federica Mogherini, the Italian currently serving as the EU’s foreign policy and defense chief.

Mogherini told a group of EU ambassadors this week that she was pushing hard to build joint military capabilities, according to a report in the London Times.

She cautioned that “the European army is not something that is going to happen any time soon,” but added: “Now is the time for real stuff and this is only the beginning.”

One criticism of an EU military is that it would overlap with NATO, but the Italian source disagreed. “What if the EU participated in NATO missions? That would be positive,” he said.

The revival of the EU military plan is due to be discussed at a meeting of EU leaders in Bratislava, Slovakia, on Sept. 16.

Pauline Massart, a defense expert with the Friends of Europe think tank in Brussels, said: “With the UK voting to leave the EU, France is the only member state left with both proper operational capability and the political will to use it, an unsustainable position in the long term.

“It’s interesting to see that largely Eurosceptic leaders in Eastern Europe have quickly rallied to the idea of strengthened European defense cooperation. But few of the countries which have so far expressed interest in the project cite the same reason, which range from budgets and migration to a resurgent Russia or independence from NATO.”

Martin Banks and Pierre Tran contributed to this report.