{"id":652865,"date":"2020-04-23T07:25:51","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T11:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=652865"},"modified":"2020-04-23T07:25:51","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T11:25:51","slug":"germany-plans-to-buy-93-eurofighters-45-f-18s-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=652865","title":{"rendered":"Germany Plans to Buy 93 Eurofighters, 45 F-18s: Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Germany plans to buy 93 Eurofighters and 45 US-made F-18s to replace ageing combat jets, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said Tuesday, emphasizing that the US planes satisfied NATO requirements.<\/p>\n

Amid growing criticism over her decision to include US-made aircraft in the mix, the minister told Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper the F-18s were needed as \u201cbridging technology\u201d.<\/p>\n

To retire the present fleet of Tornado aircraft, the Luftwaffe (airforce) must maintain certain capabilities, and she told the German daily \u201cit has to be said, that currently only US manufacturers are offering\u201d the capacity to carry nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

In a letter to parliament\u2019s defence committee, the minister underscored that the Boeing-built jets would allow Germany to meet its NATO nuclear sharing duties as they can carry US atomic warheads.<\/p>\n

At present, the Tornado is the only Luftwaffe plane certified to carry nuclear arms.<\/p>\n

The minister stressed however that Eurofighters would be the \u201cbackbone of the Luftwaffe\u201d.<\/p>\n

An advanced Franco-German fighter dubbed the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) is not expected to be ready until 2040.<\/p>\n


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\n Click here for original story, Germany Plans to Buy 93 Eurofighters, 45 F-18s: Minister<\/a>
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\nSource: Air Force News <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Germany plans to buy 93 Eurofighters and 45 US-made F-18s to replace ageing combat jets, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said Tuesday, emphasizing that the US planes satisfied NATO requirements. Amid… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":652866,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-force-space-command"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=652865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/652866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=652865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=652865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=652865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}