The F-35s Germany Just Ordered Are the Most Consequential Weapons Purchase in Europe in 50 Years

Germany's F-35A fighters are entering final assembly. They will carry nuclear weapons under NATO's sharing agreement. Here is why this is the most significant European defence development in decades.

The image released by Lockheed Martin on March 28, 2026 showed a partially assembled fighter jet in a Fort Worth, Texas factory — visually unremarkable compared to the hundreds of other F-35As that have rolled off the same production line. What makes this specific aircraft historically significant is what it represents: Germany's first nuclear-capable tactical fighter aircraft since the Bundeswehr operated Tornados.

Germany's order of F-35A Lightning II fighters, which are entering final assembly for delivery beginning later this year, is the culmination of a process that began when Chancellor Scholz announced the 'Zeitenwende' — historical turning point — in the days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The F-35A is not merely a more capable aircraft than the Tornado it replaces. It is a different order of capability: stealth characteristics that make detection dramatically harder, sensor fusion that gives pilots unprecedented situational awareness, and — most significantly — dual-key nuclear certification under NATO's nuclear sharing arrangements.

Under NATO's nuclear sharing doctrine, the United States maintains a number of B61 nuclear gravity bombs at European bases, including at Büchel Air Base in Germany. These weapons can only be released with US authorization — Germany retains no independent nuclear decision-making authority. But the aircraft that would carry and deliver them in extremis is a German aircraft with German pilots. Germany's continued participation in this arrangement, after years of domestic debate about whether German democracy could sustain the moral weight of nuclear sharing, is itself a statement of strategic commitment.

The broader European significance is considerable. Germany's full rearmament — and the F-35 is its most visible symbol — reshapes the European security architecture in ways that allies and adversaries are still working through. A rearmed, nuclear-sharing Germany with the continent's largest army and a defence budget growing toward 3 percent of GDP is a fundamentally different entity from the strategically ambiguous Germany that Europe grew accustomed to during the post-Cold War decades.