Italy rebuffs German bid to enter joint fighter jet project
Summary
- Italy has rejected Germany's bid to enter a joint fighter jet project in which the two countries had been in talks.
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Eurofighter eyes sales of 200 additional aircraft - Breaking Defensebreakingdefense.com· 9d
A Breaking Defense article reports the Eurofighter consortium's case for selling more than 200 additional Typhoon jets, citing potential second-batch orders from Turkey and Saudi Arabia worth 78 aircraft and a 36-jet deal with Austria. Airbus says its proposal to replace Portugal's F-16s is nearly ready, while CEO Tamarit Degenhardt targets a production rate of 30 aircraft a year by 2028.
Germany fears breaking dependence on US weapons could strain transatlantic tiespolitico.eu· 9d
Politico reports that Germany's defense ministry privately warned, in briefing notes prepared for a parliamentary defense committee meeting, that moving too quickly to cut dependence on American weapons could jeopardize relations with Washington. Germany gets more than a third of its major arms imports from the United States — F-35 jets, Chinook helicopters and Patriot systems — and the notes caution that Berlin "cannot afford abrupt changes of course without jeopardizing the partnership," even as Patriot shortages complicate aid to Ukraine and the European Commission wants EU countries to spend at least half of procurement budgets on European-made equipment by 2030.
