PARIS — Denmark acquired 4 extra F-35 fighter jets on Thursday, with greater than half of the nation’s ordered fleet of stealth plane now stationed on Danish soil, after supply had been delayed as producer Lockheed Martin struggled to implement an improve for the airplane.
The 4 jets joined the fighter wing at Skrydstrup air base after a supply flight from the Lockheed Martin factories in Texas by way of the Azores, bringing the variety of repatriated F35s to fifteen, the Danish Ministry of Defence stated in a press release on Friday.
The nation has ordered 27 of the fighters, of which six are stationed at Luke Air Drive Base in Arizona for coaching. The remaining six plane that can full the order are scheduled to be delivered by the tip of 2026, the protection ministry stated.
“With the arrival of the 4 plane yesterday, we have now taken one other step in the direction of build up the fight functionality of the F-35 plane,” stated Maj. Gen. Jan Dam, the commander of the Royal Danish Air Drive.
Lockheed Martin deliveries of F-35 jets had been delayed final yr as a result of points with the so-called Know-how Refresh 3 improve, or TR-3. That left Denmark scrambling for choices to satisfy F-35 rollout milestones and increase its regionally primarily based fleet past 4 plane, finally prompting a choice in June to fly the nation’s coaching plane residence.
After the Minister of Defence needed to inform the federal government final yr that the supply delays may have an effect on the F-35 program milestones, “the outlook now seems completely different,” the MoD stated.
Protection Minister Troels Lund Poulsen instructed enterprise newspaper Borsen in March that he needed to order extra F-35 jets, regardless of threats by U.S. President Donald Trump concentrating on the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland, with the minister saying Denmark is simply too small to function a number of varieties of fighter jets.
The Danish Air Drive has began to make use of the F-35 to take over some air-policing missions from the nation’s growing older F-16 fleet, with the brand new jets flying their first mission to intercept a Russian navy plane over the Baltic Sea in late March. The nation plans to section out the F-16 for air protection by the tip of 2025, based on the MoD.
Danish F-35s took half within the NATO train Ramstein Flag from March 31 to April 11, their first participation in a serious train, working from the air base at Skrydstrup.
Denmark has pledged to donate F-16s to Ukraine as a part of a coalition with the Netherlands and Norway.
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Protection Information. He began his profession at Bloomberg Information and has expertise reporting on expertise, commodity markets and politics.
