Diplomats usually leave the sales talk to the manufacturers. Not this time. At a joint press conference in the Palácio das Necessidades in Lisbon on 8 October, a reporter asked US Secretary of State Marco Rubio which jet Portugal should buy to replace its ageing F-16 Fighting Falcons. He did not hedge.

“We think they should buy the F-35 because we think it’s the best fighter jet in the world,” Rubio said, before promising a proposal “very competitive with every other plane that is offered on the table”. The man standing beside him, Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel, answered more carefully: no decision has been taken, and Lisbon is looking at the American offer seriously, as it looks at others.

That one exchange sums up where an F-35 for Portugal stands. Washington wants the deal for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II. Portugal has not even opened a formal competition. And Airbus, Dassault and Saab are already in the room.

What Rubio actually said

The State Department transcript shows the question came from the Portuguese press pool: was Lisbon choosing on political rather than military grounds, and were European rivals putting the F-35 at a disadvantage? Rangel took it first, stressing that the decision belongs to the whole government and that the defence ministry will play a large part.

Rubio then went further than most secretaries of state would on an open procurement. He acknowledged repeatedly that the choice belongs to Lisbon, then made the commercial case anyway, pointing to the interoperability of flying the same jet as the United States.

“Obviously, I’m not here to promote the airplanes made by some other country, so we want them to buy the F-35 and we think it’s the best plane in the world.”

Marco Rubio — US Secretary of State, joint press availability with Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel, Lisbon, 8 October 2026 (State Department transcript)

He also reminded his hosts of shared history: the United States and Portugal, he said, built Portugal’s F-16 fleet together, through decades of shared maintenance, training and joint operations.

The F-16s that need replacing

Portugal bought the F-16 to replace the A-7 Corsair II. Under the Peace Atlantis I and II programmes it acquired 45 Block 15 jets: 20 new-build aircraft delivered from 1994, then 25 former US Air National Guard airframes. The fleet was brought to F-16AM/BM standard under the Mid-Life Update, much of it carried out in Portugal.

The fleet has shrunk since. Twelve F-16s went to Romania under a 2013 deal, with five more following later. How many remain depends on who is counting: Reuters puts it at 28 upgraded F-16s, while The War Zone lists 25 F-16AM/BMs, 21 single-seaters and four two-seaters. All of them fly from Monte Real near Leiria, and they have stood NATO air-policing duty from the Baltic States and Iceland to Romania.

The jets are not falling apart. But the Portuguese Air Force chief, General João Cartaxo Alves, told Diário de Notícias in December 2025 that the replacement should have started about two decades earlier, according to AeroTime, and put the likely buy at 14 to 28 aircraft.

Marco Rubio’s answer on the F-35 at the Lisbon press conference with Paulo Rangel, 8 October 2026. Video: Forbes Breaking News

From “obvious choice” to open question

For a while an F-35 for Portugal looked like a foregone conclusion. In April 2024 the air force chief of staff was reported to have spoken of 28 F-35As by 2030, before the defence ministry said there was no current plan to buy them.

Then, in March 2025, Defence Minister Nuno Melo told the newspaper Público that the geopolitical environment had to shape the choice. His words, as translated by The Aviationist, became the most quoted line of Europe’s brief F-35 wobble.

Washington has spent the months since trying to win the argument back. In February 2026 US Ambassador John Arrigo told CNN Portugal the F-35 would put the Portuguese Air Force among Europe’s top tier. Rubio’s visit was the most senior version of the same message yet.

The European rivals are already in Lisbon

Lisbon is not short of alternatives. Airbus has said it will table an unsolicited Eurofighter Typhoon proposal, with financing and industrial participation, in late October or early November, as we reported in Eurofighter for Portugal: Airbus Bids Before the Tender Exists.

Dassault, signing for its Rafale partners Thales and Safran, put its name to a memorandum of understanding with the Portuguese aerospace and defence cluster AED in September, covered in Rafale for Portugal. Saab’s Gripen E completes the field.

The Europeans are selling work for Portuguese industry and a seat in Europe’s own combat-air future; Melo has said Portugal wants to join either FCAS or GCAP, initially as an observer. The Americans are selling the jet that most of Portugal’s NATO neighbours already fly.

¿Qué sucede después?

Nothing is signed, and nothing is even formally open. The decision sits with the government of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, with the defence ministry steering the process, and Rangel was careful to say he could add nothing further.

What Rubio’s visit changed is the temperature. An F-35 for Portugal is now an explicit American foreign-policy ask, made in public, in Lisbon, by the secretary of state. Whatever Portugal chooses, the choice will now be read as a statement about which allies it trusts, and that is exactly the debate Melo opened in 2025.

The jaguars at Monte Real have a few good years left. The argument over what replaces them will not wait that long.

Sources: US Department of State, transcript of the joint press availability of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel, Lisbon, 8 October 2026; Reuters via Cyprus Mail and Arab News, 8 October 2026; The War Zone (Thomas Newdick), 8 October 2026; Observador and Notícias ao Minuto, 8 October 2026; AeroTime, 23 February 2026; The Aviationist, 13 March 2025; Wikipedia, Portuguese Air Force, Monte Real Air Base and F-16 operators; US Air Force / DVIDS imagery captions.