5 Reasons NATO Air Forces Are Retiring Fighter Jets Long Before Airframes Wear Out

As a general rule, NATO air forces tend to retire their fighter jets long before those airframes reach the end of their service lives, although there are some important exceptions. Perhaps the US Navy is one of the most significant exceptions to this tendency. This is partly due to the massive stress placed on the aircraft airframes, where every aircraft-carrier-based launch is that of a catapult and every landing resembles that of a controlled crash.