{"id":33175,"date":"2026-06-09T16:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/33175\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T16:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:42:09","slug":"after-fcas-demise-germanys-options-include-ordering-more-f-35-warplanes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/33175\/","title":{"rendered":"After FCAS demise, Germany\u2019s options include ordering more F-35 warplanes"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLOGNE, Germany \u2014 German defense leaders will go back to the drawing board in their quest for a next-generation fighter jet following the end<\/a> of the once-ambitious French-German-Spanish Future Combat Air System.<\/p>\n

As the dust was still settling in Berlin from Monday\u2019s bombshell news, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius outlined three options on Tuesday, plus a mysterious fourth path that he alluded to but left unexplained.<\/p>\n

One option consists of buying additional stealthy F-35 jets from the United States on top of the 35 already ordered, he said on the sidelines of a meeting with his Czech counterpart, Jarom\u00edr Z\u016fna, in Berlin.<\/p>\n

German news outlet Der Spiegel reported last October<\/a> that plans were already in the works to purchase 15 such warplanes from the U.S., to the tune of almost $3 billion.<\/p>\n

Pistorius confirmed those plans are now on the table, saying they could be a \u201cbridge\u201d solution \u201cor whatever\u201d on the way to a next-generation weapon for Germany.<\/p>\n

The second option entails Berlin getting involved in an existing international fighter program with sixth-generation features, Pistorius said.<\/p>\n

Aside from a U.S. push to that end, the most obvious candidate for this path would be a British-Italian-Japanese effort, dubbed Global Combat Air Programme.<\/p>\n

Finally, Germany could start its own program, Pistorius said, \u201cunder German leadership with Airbus<\/a> and other partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said German defense leaders had been talking with Airbus about feasible options \u201cfor months,\u201d because the end of the FCAS program had been expected.<\/p>\n

Pistorius largely blamed unresolvable differences<\/a> with French industry champion Dassault over intellectual property as well as diverging military requirements for the program\u2019s demise.<\/p>\n

In the end, government leaders from France and Germany were unable to compel the companies involved to cooperate, he said, as much as Paris and Berlin had wanted to.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing what we know today, we wouldn\u2019t set up a program in this way again,\u201d Pistorius said.<\/p>\n

Sebastian Sprenger is associate editor for Europe at Defense News, reporting on the state of the defense market in the region, and on U.S.-Europe cooperation and multi-national investments in defense and global security. Previously he served as managing editor for Defense News. He is based in Cologne, Germany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLOGNE, Germany \u2014 German defense leaders will go back to the drawing board in their quest for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1326,1327,1322,31126,2653,60,5,30862,31127],"class_list":["post-33175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-circulated-defense-news","tag-defense-news","tag-dn-dnr","tag-f-35","tag-fcas","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-scaf","tag-stealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}