Aerospace

The German Air Force Is Falling to Pieces

According to the German newspaper Deutsche Welle , the report said that “less than half of its arsenal of Tornados was actually ready for deployment surfaced. Out of 93 commissioned fighter jets, only 66 were operational in general terms and only 29 were combat-ready at the current time.”

Only a year before an insoector general report had said that 58 percent of the Tornados were ready for combat. The Luftwaffe’s goal is to have around 70 percent of the planes in a state of combat readiness. Like Gerhartz did, the 2015 report pointed to a lack of spare parts as one reason the Tornados were in such a sad state of readiness.

More recently, earlier this year, Germany said that only 26 Tornados are combat ready. The Tornados are the planes Germany uses as the delivery system for U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in the country.

If anything, Germany’s Eurofighters are in even worse shape.

In May 2018, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that only four of Germany’s Eurofighters were ready for combat. The major problem was that out of 128 Eurofighters, just 10 didn’t suffer from a defect in their defense system.