[Germany]Germany's 10 billion euro "nomination", the United States laughs! Europe's last "shame" is torn away

Auther: Shi Jiang Yue, senior military commentator in China.

Unofficially Translated from https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/tBIaI1HFqX2_zP3Ix1gi6w

Suddenly throwing out a big deal, spending 10 billion euros on 35 F-35 fighter jets!

This move by Germany has instantly shocked the whole Europe. In the past decade or so, Germany has been high profile with France, adhere to the "independent defense of Europe" Germany, also to rely on the United States "to defend Europe"?

Just a few days ago, the German defense minister made a remark that also shocked Europe.

How long can Germany, as the largest economic power in Europe, keep the ammunition in its arsenal for a fight? Some thought it would be months, wrongly, not days either. The answer was a few hours.

Germany's move has exposed Europe's biggest "weakness".

Europe's important weapons development is no longer possible, the future can only rely on the United States?

01 Why did Germany choose the "luxury top of the line" F-35?

The ammunition pool is empty, not from the media reports, but the German defense minister Lambrecht himself said.

At least two ministers in the German government's cabinet have already criticised Lambrecht over the failure of German ammunition procurement and the serious shortage of ammunition for the army.

Despite the fact that Germany has previously approved a new €100 billion special armaments fund, it is still facing criticism about the slow pace of projected defence spending. Where are these funds being spent? How is it being spent? Is Germany's military industry producing at the slow pace of a tortoise?

The problem of ammunition shortages, known since Lambrecht took office last December, has been exacerbated with Germany's donation of large-calibre howitzers and corresponding ammunition, as well as other army weapons, to Ukraine. The defence minister is now being criticised for inaction by both the opposition and within the coalition government.

As the crisis in Ukraine is spreading, Germany is shouting slogans about "defending Europe". Yet a letter has been published which shows that Germany already wants to increase its budget by 10 billion euros in order to buy 35 F-35 stealth fighter jets. In other words, Germany's "defence of Europe" is predicated on continuing to rely on the United States.

This is indeed very surprising, because Germany has not previously had the intention of introducing the F-35 fighter jets. Germany has its own aviation industry system, before the European Typhoon fighter, is Germany's joint European allies in the development and manufacture of more advanced models, belonging to the 4 1/2 generation of fighters in the best.

Currently, there are about 140 Typhoon fighters in service in the German Air Force.

According to Reuters, Lambrecht said on the 6th of local time, the German Federal Parliament will decide on December 14 on whether to buy the U.S. F-35 fighter jets at a total price of 10 billion euros. After all, this 10 billion euros is not a small amount, need to go through the parliamentary budget committee's careful discussion.

Looking at the price this time, 10 billion euros for 35 F-35s equates to nearly 300 million euros each. For the United States has been the base production cost of the F-35 within 100 million dollars, this price is obviously very high, should be the "luxury top version".

Germany is said to be buying 35 F-35s, including supporting missiles and other weaponry, but no specific details have been revealed. If the deal is reached, the first eight fighters will be delivered in 2026. The F-35s will replace the ageing German Rafale aircraft.

The Luftwaffe's existing Rafale, which has been in service for 40 years, is not only old but also costly to maintain. The Luftwaffe wanted new aircraft with electronic warfare capabilities that could jam, suppress and attack enemy air defence systems.

The German Ministry of Defence had planned to procure US F-18s, but they have not yet been certified for use with nuclear weapons. In January this year, after consultations between the German Defence Minister and Chancellor Scholz, it was decided to do a broader procurement assessment, which included the F-35s, which are not only certified for the use of nuclear weapons, but also have limited electronic warfare equipment.

In other words, if owned, the F-35 would be the only German jet fighter capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

02 "Europe's future fighter", the French-German conflict can no longer be covered

One may ask, where will the 10 billion euros come from?

In fact, because Germany's arsenal is empty, the purchase of 35 F-35s will be the first major project in which Germany will use the 100 billion euro German military "special fund".

Earlier this year, the German Bundesrat approved a 100 billion euro "special defence fund bill". The purpose of the special fund is to bring the Bundeswehr's weaponry back up to standard levels after the wear and tear of recent decades.

Why is Germany suddenly buying F-35s at this time, instead of insisting on self-developed or cooperatively developed European stealth fighters?

To be honest, there is really no currently available 5thgeneration aircraft for Germany to choose from in the European context, let alone one of its own. In order to bolster its European profile, Germany has joined forces with France and Spain to launch a new "European Next Generation Fighter" development project, known as the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), but this project is still in the development phase and is difficult to describe.

If Germany does introduce the F-35, it means that there is already a problem with the continuation of the "European Next Generation Fighter" project.

France's Dassault Aviation said on December 1 that a groundbreaking agreement would finally allow the French, German and Spanish efforts to build the FCAS, Europe's next-generation fighter, to go ahead.

"All obstacles have been lifted" to allow the partners to move on to the next phase, the development of a demonstration prototype of the next-generation European fighter, revealed Éric Trappier, CEO and chairman of France's Dassault Aviation. The French Defence Minister also sent his congratulations to this effect.

This comes after a year of negotiations between Dassault Aviation, and the German and Spanish subsidiaries of Airbus, which reached an agreement to take the Eurofighter Next Generation project forward, with plans to produce a demonstration prototype of the fighter, possibly in 2029.

In fact, the joint French, German and Spanish project to develop a next-generation European fighter jet was launched back in 2017. The aim of this fighter programme is to replace the Rafale developed by France's Dassault Aviation and the Eurofighter Typhoon developed jointly by Italy and the UK. At the time, this next generation European fighter programme was the largest defence project in Europe, worth €100 billion.

The project could have been the 'showpiece' for France and Germany to take up the EU's independent defence banner after Brexit. However, cooperation does not always go smoothly, especially with projects of this magnitude involving hundreds of billions of euros. The differences between France and Germany in the field of defence have since come to light.

The French Rafale and the European Typhoon are both 4th and a half generation fighters according to the original development concept, and seeing the high cost of the US investment in the development of the F-22 5th generation fighter, the European countries became hesitant to develop the 5th generation. So most countries chose to purchase the U.S. F-35 fighter jets, which seems more economical.

But France, as a representative of the traditional "European weapons" school, also wanted to develop a stealth fighter, so it pulled in the economic strength of Germany, hoping to jointly develop. However, the project was blocked by disagreements over the technical details of the development process and the proportion of investment involved.

03 The US has the last laugh

In February and March 2021, internal conflicts emerged in the European Next Generation Fighter project. First there was infighting between France and Germany, who were leading the project, and then the entry of Spain, which made it more difficult to reconcile the interests of all parties. France even said at one point that it would probably start a separate project and launch a backup.

In fact, the last generation of the "Eurofighter" cooperation ended in failure, so why did Europe choose to cooperate in the development of this way? For France, independent research and development of fighter aircraft, although the ability to have, but the economic cost is high. The less they are sold, the higher the production costs.

For example, the Rafale, which has a better performance, has not sold as well overseas as the Mirage 2000. There were also disagreements between France, Germany and Spain over intellectual property rights and the division of labour.

This, coupled with the fact that the "European Next Generation Fighter" project, which claimed to be aimed at a sixth-generation fighter, was vague in terms of the specific capability requirements of the aircraft, and that the epidemic that had been raging for the past three years had put a lot of things in jeopardy, forced the Franco-German and Spanish development of this air weapon to be put on hold for some time.

The two main contractors, France's Dassault Aviation and Airbus Defence and Space, had previously failed to find a way to carry out the programme in harmony. Now Dassault has confirmed its leadership and design role on the Next Generation Eurofighter project and that its intellectual property will be protected in the project.

But is Germany really willing in its heart? Previous Franco-German differences have been exposed. Moreover, Merkel's time has come to an end.

As the "European Next Generation Fighter", the project is claimed to consist of seven technological pillars: new engines, kinetic weapon systems, new unmanned flight capabilities, unmanned swarm attack systems, advanced sensor and stealth technologies, and an air warfare cloud network.

This contract will be officially submitted to the French Military Procurement Office, the French Directorate General of Armaments, which is responsible for managing the tri-national project. The French side is still confident and, according to a statement from the French Ministry of Defence, they still aim to deploy this "next generation fighter" system around 2040.

But there are still 18 years between now and 2040. Moreover, it is unpredictable whether this "Next Generation Fighter" project will be aborted again. Therefore, Germany's approach is to stop caring about the "European independent defence" banner and to fill the gap of its own five-generation aircraft first. You can't put your eggs in one basket anymore.

At this stage, if Germany wants an off-the-shelf fifth-generation aircraft, it can only consider the US F-35.

You can't put your eggs in one basket. And Germany has now given a hint to the French, who are leading the "European Next Generation Fighter" project, with the US F-35.

On the other side, the average cost of introducing each F-35 will be close to 300 million euros, and Lockheed Martin is really making a killing. Moreover, the arrival of the F-35 will certainly crowd out the resources of the German aviation industry, the future of Germany's development of the "European next-generation fighter" may be less and less motivated.

The US would naturally like to see such an outcome, as Germany's purchase of the F-35 means that Washington is dismantling the momentum of "independent European defence" from within. After all, an important role of the F-35 is to strengthen the defense dependence of allied countries on the United States, while harvesting "leeks" in the arms trade.

In the field of European defense, France has never wanted to be dependent on the United States, so many European warplanes, missiles and surface warships, France wants to rely on their own ability to engage in, or pull other European countries together to engage in.

However, now Germany has chosen to "turn its back" on the United States at a critical moment, directly purchasing the F-35, which also reveals the huge crisis facing Europe's independent defense.