The Gripen would be a compatible platform, assuming they might get them.
What I haven't heard yet is how many of them can be refurbished again though. Germany only has around 150 in an operable state.

[–] Chup@feddit.de 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Do you mean a different jet or country? As Sweden is currently checking if sending Gripen would be possible. But looking at Wikipedia operators, Germany never had any of those.

Germany has some older Tornado jets that can launch Taurus, but those are still needed for the US nuclear weapons and sending jets would be a whole new discussion.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Those Tornados are barely hanging in the air as-is and spare parts are exceedingly hard to get you really don't want to expose them to war conditions. The ECR ones are getting replaced by (upgraded and/or new) Eurofighters ASAP, the rest are to drop nukes and thus really only have to fly once anyway (and will be replaced by F35 because Eurofighter doesn't want their secret sauce in US hands, which would be required to get US nukes certified, we might very well switch over to French nukes when it comes to nuclear sharing (While the French definitely aren't above a bit of industrial espionage they already know everything through Airbus etc. anyway)).

[–] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

No, I mean the Gripen. It's one of the tested compatible launch platforms for Taurus missiles and there's talks of sending them to Ukraine.

Tornados are garbage tier at this point and should rather sit in a museum. Absurdly expensive to maintain (200 hours of maintenance per 1 hour of flight) and required to uphold Germany's nuclear sharing program (they're the only nuclear carrier platform until the F35 arrive).