alt Hacker NewsIndeed - the UK needs to rely more on home grown solutions. No harm in using foreign components/expertise to make progress, but we have to constantly strive to achieve self-reliance. This may never happen, but the trajectory needs be in that direction.
I think the word "selfish" here is doing a disservice to your argument. Nothing selfish about trying to achieve self-reliance. It annoys that even a lot of seemingly simple software used in the NHS relies on American SaaS companies.
“Self reliance” in military terms is overrated because it means redundancy which increases costs and sourcing everything domestically means missing out on comparative advantage of different countries). The UK doesn’t have nearly enough colonies to source materials anymore.
The US already created 3 variants of a 6th gen fighter available to all of NATO and some other countries. AFAIK, the UK hasn’t even built a 4th generation fighter, something EuroFighter, Dassault, and Saab have done (in Europe) and the US has done 4 times over (later variants of F-15, F-16, F-18, and all F-22s).