Germany may reconsider Tornado replacement options (F-35)

The F-35A jets of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) will be based in Büchel, in the Eifel region of western Germany.

The Bundeswehr (the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany) have decided that all the new F-35A stealth jets destined to the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) will be stationed at Büchel Air Base.

Citing a spokesman of the Bundeswehr, Südwestrundfunk, a regional public broadcasting corporation serving the southwest of Germany, reported that the 5th generation aircraft will be based at the airfield in the Eifel region, in the western part of Germany, after the planned renovation works of the runway in Büchel. The construction work, costing around 170 million euros, is expected to be completed in February 2026.


https://theaviationist.com/2022/06/13/g ... to-buchel/

Think it will cost a fair bit more than 170m EUR to get the base set up. Marham cost c£500m and was a base for Tornado's just like Buchel...

ILA 2022: Germany continues impressive sales run for F-35
21 Jun 2022 Gareth Jennings

"Germany's recent volte-face on procuring the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) was the latest step in what continues to be an impressive 100% sales record for the platform in international competitions.

Having previously discounted the US-made ‘stealth fighter' on political grounds, Berlin announced in March that it had selected the F-35 to partially replace the Luftwaffe's fleet of Panavia Tornados. This decision, which was followed days later by a similar pronouncement from Canada for its future fighter requirement, meant that [the] fifth-generation aircraft has so far secured every single international competition for which it has been offered.

According to the Bundeswehr announcement on 14 March, the Luftwaffe is set to receive more than 35 F-35As to satisfy the nuclear mission required of the Tornado successor, with the remainder of the 85-aircraft requirement likely to be taken up by additional Eurofighters that will also satisfy a separate but related NATO electronic attack requirement in a new Electronic Combat Role (ECR) version...."

Source: https://www.janes.com/defence-news/air- ... n-for-f-35

A few things come to mind in this thread.

1. I cannot describe with words what the Russian invasion has done to line the pockets of the military industrial complex. I am only disappointed that I didn't buy Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon or who ever makes stinger missiles stock.

2. Saab, Euro-fighter and Dassault made a very big blunder in fighting the F-35 all of these years, with old tech. Why didn't they build a Euro canard with internal bays? Did they really bet on Russia not being a threat?
It's even worse when you consider that the blunder wasn't made by 1 company, but a few.

3. So now we have basically given lockeedca monopoly on the western 5th generation fighter market.
It should have been clear years ago that this was the trend. Personally I would love to see a competitive design come out of the west. Europe dropped the ball.
I had better get that Lockeed stock before China invades.

"So now we have basically given lockeedca monopoly"

Who's "we"?

Lockheed Martin saw the future, h*ll, they MADE the future, and worked their @sses off to bring world-beating products to market. Where's the "given" part? I'm not getting it.

2. Saab, Euro-fighter and Dassault made a very big blunder in fighting the F-35 all of these years, with old tech. Why didn't they build a Euro canard with internal bays? Did they really bet on Russia not being a threat?
It's even worse when you consider that the blunder wasn't made by 1 company, but a few.

I don't see this has much as a lack of foreseeing the inevitable need to develop, build and move into 5th gen fighter aircraft by the European companies but instead this fault falls on European governments side instead.
You see, nowadays fighter aircraft (even the older 4th gen) are very complex and expensive to developed and currently fighter aircraft are only developed if/when a country/government or countries/governments decide to develop one. Resuming the vast majority of development funds come from the government(s) without any exception. BTW, this also happened and is happening with the JSF/F-35. If we look at the F-35 we can clearly see that it wasn't a simple case of LM presenting/developing the aircraft and the US government accepting it. It was the US government that launched the program called JSF and from all companies that participated in it, LM won and the F-35 was thus developed.
Note that for example Boeing (a US company) also doesn't have any 5th gen fighter aircraft just like the European companies that you mentioned despite have competed in the JSF program.

So and again the problem seems to be all in the European governments/countries side and not so much on the European companies side since they can only develop 5th gen fighter aircraft if requested and funded by the respective governments. And here comes the main origin of this problem: It was perceived and very wrongfully so by the general western/European population (who votes and supports their governments) that full scale conventional warfare against a near-peer enemy was a thing of the past and counter-insurgency conflicts (Afghanistan for example) or limited "conventional" operations against an inferior enemy (Libya for example) would be the future of warfare and as such existing 4th gen fighter aircraft would be "more than enough"! Oh boy, these people were dead wrong and IMO as expected since history has this "nasty trend" of repeating itself over and over in an infinite loop!

Resuming, the European governments should have launched their "JSF" programs more than a decade ago but they didn't and now they are trying to cut their loses by trying to launch programs like Tempest or FCAS...

A few things come to mind in this thread.

1. I cannot describe with words what the Russian invasion has done to line the pockets of the military industrial complex. I am only disappointed that I didn't buy Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon or who ever makes stinger missiles stock.

2. Saab, Euro-fighter and Dassault made a very big blunder in fighting the F-35 all of these years, with old tech. Why didn't they build a Euro canard with internal bays? Did they really bet on Russia not being a threat?
It's even worse when you consider that the blunder wasn't made by 1 company, but a few.

3. So now we have basically given lockeedca monopoly on the western 5th generation fighter market.
It should have been clear years ago that this was the trend. Personally I would love to see a competitive design come out of the west. Europe dropped the ball.
I had better get that Lockeed stock before China invades.

With respect to #3, it gets even better (or worse, if you're LMT's competitor) - there are strong rumors/indicators NGAD will be a Lockheed bird. If you think about it, they have a nice chunk of the past (F-16V business), the present (F-35) and the future (F-35, for the next 30 years) + NGAD + whatever their Skunk Works division is being given oodles of $ to develop. And that doesn't count the AIM-260, Javelin and untold other weapons systems.

I bought them way back in 2006, when the F-35 looked dicey but I was convinced some day it'd be a winner. They're reasonably priced now IMO, still have massive upside (for all the aforementioned reasons, plus others) and even if LMT stays down for awhile, you can collect/re-invest a handsome dividend. You're absolutely right about 1 thing - Putin has virtually assured most US defense contractors big business. They should do really well, even absent any further military moves on Russia's part..