After the parliamentary elections in Germany, the likely successor of the current Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Friedrich Merz, has already negotiated the approval of defense spending in the amount of as much as 200 billion euros (about $210 billion), in particular as part of strengthening the country’s armed forces in view of such a threat as the Russian Federation.
This is especially important in the context of the issue that Europe as a whole has faced – namely, building up the capabilities of its defense potential without aiming at the United States, given the latest statements and actions of the newly appointed President Donald Trump. As the publication emphasizes Breaking Defense, given this, it is possible that in the long term, some defense purchases in Berlin and Washington may be at risk, the publication presents such information based on data received from three different analysts.
First of all, we are talking about a large-scale agreement for the purchase of fifth-generation F-35A fighters – two of the three analysts (J. J. Gertler of the Teal Group and Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory) believe that this deal is the first candidate for cancellation due to the high level of dependence on the United States in the context of aircraft maintenance and data acquisition.
At the same time, Jim Townsend, an employee of the Center for a New American Security, believes that there is an important nuance regarding the F-35, which is that in fact Germany has no other choice to purchase aircraft to replace the Panavia Tornado. And it’s also about time and money.
As for other projects, it is actually even less likely that Germany will refuse agreements – this is, in particular, a contract for 60 CH-47F helicopters (after all, there is less dependence on maintenance), as well as, for example, a large-scale order for Patriot air defense systems and 600 PAC-3 MSE missiles for them, in total, we are talking about more than $ 7 billion – one of the analysts emphasizes, that this air defense system is extremely important for Germany to simply abandon this agreement.