Germany’s Federal Ministry for Defence wants to buy American for the future of the country’s nuclear security-sharing mission with the United States, urging lawmakers to approve the purchase of 30 Boeing F/A-18 aircraft to carry future B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs.
The German publication Der Spiegel on Sunday reported that Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer informed Secretary of Defense Mark Esper of the ministry’s preference on April 15. Germany could buy 45 F/A-18 in total: 30 for the nuclear mission and 15 for electronic warfare.
Germany is one of several NATO allies on whose territories the United States. keeps B61 gravity bombs. From the perspective of the alliance, keeping the weapons there is a strategy to prevent potential adversaries from launching attacks on Europe.
The Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament, would have to approve the purchase of the aircraft, which would replace the Tornado manufactured by Panavia Aircraft GmbH: a joint venture supported by Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy.
Kramp-Karrenbauer’s announcement caught her partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government by surprise, Der Spiegel reported. The defense minister’s Christian Democratic Union party shares power with the Social Democratic Party, and Kramp-Karrenbauer did not inform her party’s coalition partners about the request to Esper for F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft, according to Der Spiegel.
The F/A-18 would be an alternative to a European choice, the Typhoon. Like the Tornado, the Typhoon is made in Germany by a pan-European coalition. Should the Bundestag ultimately approve the Super Hornet, it would give Boeing another toe hold in a nuclear deterrence mission that is rapidly leaving the once-ubiquitous aerospace contractor behind.
Boeing got muscled out of the competition to build the next U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile, the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. Northrop Grumman, with a captive rocket-propulsion business that Boeing said gave it an unfair cost advantage, is the only bidder for the $25 billion Air Force contract to build and deploy the new missiles, which will replace the Boeing-built Minuteman III fleet.
Northrop Grumman also manufactures the B-2 bomber and will make the B-21 Raider, both of which will eventually replace Boeing’s B-52H as the primary carrier of air-launched U.S. nuclear weapons.
