SPOOKY: Germany eying F-35 fighter jets to replace its Tornados?

[Get Ya Wig Split]

Germany eying F-35 fighter jets to replace its Tornados ?

More nations show interest in Lockheed Martin F-35. In December, the Finnish Ministry of Defense announced its selection of the Lockheed Martin F-35 as a replacement platform for the Finnish Air Force fleet of 62 F/A-18C/D Hornets. In Europe, UK, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, have already selected the F-35, and it still going on. Lockheed Martin’s business development team has been successful in winning nearly every fighter competition where the F-35 has been a contender. One of the few exceptions was in early 2019, when Germany rejected the F-35 and decided to proceed with the Eurofighter Typhoon and Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet as replacement platforms for its Tornado fleet. But recent sources suggest that Germany could possibly opt for the F-35

As part of NATO's “nuclear sharing”, and like Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, Germany has around twenty B-61 nuclear bombs made available to it by the US military. And, as such, it needs a fighter-bomber capable of implementing them, if necessary.

The Eurofighter EF-2000, a European solution, was the preference of the government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, but it had to be ruled out given that the certification of the Eurofighter EF-2000 to carry the B-61 would not have been obtained by the withdrawal of the Tornados.

In 2020, Germany announced its intention to procure from Boeing 30 F / A-18 Super Hornets [block III] and 15 E / A-18 Growlers for electronic warfare missions. But since then, no order has been placed.

For their part, the US administration removed the F / A-18 Super Hornet from the list of aircraft requiring certification to carry the B-61. There are two reasons for this: the US Navy is no longer carrying nuclear weapons on board its aircraft carriers, and the German order has not yet been signed.

The F-35A might be now back in the race. This is indeed what the German news agency DPA suggested in a dispatch concerning the last interview between Christine Lambrecht, the Minister of Defense, with Olaf Scholz, Merkel's successor. The agenda of this interview was to "clarify whether the purchase of more modern F-35 planes is likely to be an alternative and whether the Eurofighter can be considered to resume the electronic warfare missions of the Tornado “.

Germany eying F-35 fighter jets to replace its Tornados ?

More nations are showing interest in Lockheed Martin F-35. In December, the Finnish Ministry of Defense announced its selection of the Lockheed Martin F-35 as a replacement platform for the Finnish Air Force fleet of 62 F/A-18C/D Hornets. In Europe, UK, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, have already...

airrecognition.com

https://twitter.com/x/status/1480557104138264580

https://twitter.com/x/status/1480464679864610819

 

[313ghazi]

It'll be a sad day when all the Tornados are retired. They looked very nice.

 

[Ali_Baba]

Just as long as the Germans dont ask to join Tempest by pulling out of FCAS - we can just kick back and laugh at them..

 

[Get Ya Wig Split]

New German government revisits Tornado replacement options

WASHINGTON – Germany is once again weighing its options for replacing the country’s aging Tornado aircraft fleet, which could put the F-35 back on the table.

The plan, first reported by German press agency DPA over the weekend, follows a pledge in the coalition government agreement late last year.

The review would re-open a recommendation made by then-Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen in early 2019 for phasing out Germany’s nearly 90 Tornados by the end of the decade. It ditched an F-35 option, fearing purchasing that fighter jet would upset the Franco-German defense alliance with the Future Combat Air System at its core.

Officials instead favored buying a roughly equal number of Eurofighters and new-generation Boeing F-18s. The latter would fly electronic-attack missions and serve as a bomb carrier under Germany’s NATO nuclear-sharing commitments, the thinking went.

The German defense ministry on Monday declined to say whether the F-35 is now expressly back under consideration. Conversations between Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht and Chancellor Olaf Scholz about Tornado replacement options, reported by DPA as having happened last Thursday, are considered “internal,” a spokeswoman told Defense News.

Officials pointed to a Dec. 19 Lambrecht interview in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, where she was quoted as favoring a “European” plane for the nuclear-sharing mission while at the same time leaving open the possibility that the requisite U.S. certifications may not happen in time, or at all.

“I will consider all options,” Lambrecht said.

Germany’s Tornado replacement debate is a recurring exercise for the country’s defense intelligentsia. For the nuclear mission, it is now believed Washington would likely only allow a U.S. aircraft, although even the degrees of atomic readiness among the F-35 and the F-18 are disputed.

Against that backdrop, the nuclear mission is controversial to begin with, treated as a necessary evil by the new government in the formulation of a defense and security agenda that also includes nonproliferation goals.

For the electronic-attack mission, the German defense industry, led by Airbus Defence and Space, had lobbied against an F-18 Growler choice ever since Von der Leyen’s recommendation, arguing the Eurofighter could be developed to at least a similar level of capability.

Meanwhile, introducing the F-35 back into the mix of German considerations, even the talk of it, could lead French officials to question Berlin’s commitment to the Future Combat Air System. That, in turn, risks not only toppling the sixth-generation aircraft program but the European Union’s defense-industrial ambitions as a whole.

The question is if FCAS could co-exist with a German F-35 acquisition, especially given that the DPA report suggests those planes would primarily work doomsday stand-by duty.

German industry should not be expected to actively support any U.S. aircraft in the Tornado-replacement decision, Reinhard Brandl, a member of the opposition Christian Social Union and the parliamentary defense committee, told Defense News in an interview. At the same time, he noted it’s primarily the electronic-attack portfolio that German companies are most keen on guarding against American products.

And the French-German cooperation on FCAS is far from going swimmingly at the moment, according to Brandl, who blamed France’s Dassault for refusing to sign an industry contract for the aircraft portion of the program.

“Dassault is not ready to accept Airbus as a partner on equal terms,” he told Defense News. “They are saying, ‘We’ll do FCAS, but only by our rules.’”

With Dassault’s export order books for its Rafale fighter full, the company may see less reason to agree on an FCAS fighter and focus on upgrades for its own jet instead, Brandl argued. In that sense, German talk of of an F-35 buy may serve as a fall-back option, he added.

A Dassault spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a question about the status of the industry contract.

New German government revisits Tornado replacement options

Germany is once again weighing its options for replacing the country’s aging Tornado aircraft fleet, which could put the F-35 back on the table.

www.defensenews.com

 

[aziqbal]

German have deep pockets

I wonder how many they are looking for