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Athens · Thursday, 29 October 2026

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Front view of Germany’s first F-35A Lightning II with full-colour German national markings on stage at the Fort Worth rollout ceremony, with screens showing the jet marked 35+01

Air Force

Germany: First Luftwaffe F-35A arrives in Arkansas for pilot training

Germany’s first F-35A Lightning II has arrived at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Arkansas, where it will be used to train Luftwaffe pilots, Lockheed Martin announced. Deliveries to Germany begin in 2027.

Ioannis M. Ioannis M.Newsroom
1 min readUpdated

Germany’s first F-35A, serial 35+01, at the rollout ceremony at Lockheed Martin’s F-35 production facility in Fort Worth, Texas, on September 18, 2026. Photo: Lockheed Martin press release, via Lockheed Martin Media Center. Cropped to 16:9 and converted to WebP.

Germany’s first F-35A Lightning II has arrived at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Arkansas, where it will be used to train the pilots of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe), Lockheed Martin announced. The aircraft was flown from the company’s facility in Fort Worth, Texas, ahead of the first deliveries to Germany in 2027.

Eight German F-35As will be temporarily based at Ebbing for training, and all of them are already in final assembly at Fort Worth. Germany ordered 35 F-35As through the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programme; the government-to-government contract was approved on December 14, 2022. The fighters carry full-colour national insignia, as do the F-35s of Denmark and Belgium.

The main mission of the German F-35As will be NATO’s nuclear deterrence under the alliance’s nuclear-sharing arrangement, in which they replace the Tornado IDS. Under that arrangement, aircraft of allied air forces are equipped to carry US B61 nuclear bombs. The first aircraft are expected to arrive at their home base at Büchel in 2027.

F-35 Germany Lockheed Martin

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