Germany Drops Out of Fighter Program

Citing excessive costs and a new security situation, Germany on Tuesday pulled out of a multibillion-dollar European defense project to build an advanced combat aircraft for the coming decades.

The decision not to move forward into the production phase of the European Fighter Aircraft (EFA) effectively makes the prestigious project the first major victim of the spiraling costs of German unification as Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s government struggles to regain control over public spending.

The defense budget is expected to drop by 2.5% this year in Germany, although overall public spending will rise by a similar amount.

“The (EFA) in its present form is too expensive,” declared a statement issued by a meeting of members of Parliament from Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union.

The decision by Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain to develop the plane was made in the early 1980s, and the first prototype is scheduled to fly later this year.

Production of the plane, known in Germany as the Jaeger 90, was scheduled to start early next year, mainly in the area around Munich. The aircraft would have replaced the aging, U.S.-built F-4 Phantom that now makes up a key component of the country’s air defense umbrella.

“The development of this plane began when the Cold War was still going strong,” commented a Defense Ministry official in Bonn. “It was designed to deal with a Soviet threat, and that scenario doesn’t fit any more.”

Germany had planned to purchase about 140 of the planes at an estimated total cost of $12.5 billion. That number is about one-quarter of the estimated 550 aircraft that were scheduled to be built and placed in the air forces of the four nations.