On Friday, 21 November 2025, the F-35 JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) Program Office announced on social media the visit of Nils Hilmer, State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Defence, to the FACO (Final Assembly and Check-Out) final assembly facility in Fort Worth, Texas, owned by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics (a part of Lockheed Martin). The official signed the forward fuselage section of the first German F-35A Lightning II multirole aircraft, which has symbolically entered the final assembly stage.
Photo: F-35 JSF via Lockheed Martin
The German delegation, headed by Nils Hilmer, was shown the final assembly line for F-35 family aircraft (one of only three in the world, alongside the FACO in Cameri, Italy, and the FACO in Nagoya, Japan), as well as a cockpit simulator.
Let us recall that construction of the first German aircraft, factory number MG-01, began on 5 December 2024, when the German delegation from the Air Force (Luftwaffe) and the Bundeswehr’s defense procurement office BAAINBw (Bundesamt für Ausrüstung, Informationstechnik und Nutzung der Bundeswehr) signed the fuselage bulkhead, the first structural component of every aircraft.
Let us recall that on 28 July 2022 Germany received U.S. State Department approval to purchase 35 F-35A aircraft with an equipment and weapons package worth up to 8.4 billion USD. On 14 December 2022 the Federal Ministry of Defence signed the relevant intergovernmental agreement (LOA). On 17 August 2023 the U.S. NAVAIR command signed a 622.36 million USD contract with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics for the first work related to the production of the German aircraft.
The first eight aircraft will be delivered to the Luftwaffe by 2027 (originally planned for 2026), with the mentioned example arriving as early as next year. German personnel will train on their aircraft at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith, Arkansas, together with the Poles (already ongoing), Singaporeans, Finns, and Swiss (and later also Greeks and Czechs).
German F-35As will be armed with AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM medium-range air-to-air missiles, AIM-9X Block II+ Sidewinder short-range missiles, AGM-158B JASSM-ER extended-range cruise missiles, GBU-53/B SDB II StormBreaker guided bombs, GBU-31 JDAM and GBU-54 JDAM bombs, as well as NSM anti-ship missiles, and above all, which was the main reason the Berlin government chose this platform, B61-12 thermonuclear guided bombs under the NATO Nuclear Sharing program.
Meanwhile, on 20 October of this year, the German daily Der Spiegel reported that it had obtained confidential budget documents showing that Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government plans to purchase another 15 American 5th-generation combat aircraft, with around 2.5 billion EUR earmarked for this. The first rumors suggesting that the Luftwaffe fleet of Lightnings could be increased to 50 aircraft had already appeared on 10 July this year in the American magazine Politico, but at that time Berlin denied them, now it does not.
German industry in the F-35 program
The German defense industry has also joined the F-35 program. On 17 February 2023, the Rheinmetall AG group signed a letter of intent with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin regarding the possibility of launching an F-35 center-fuselage production facility in Germany.
On 4 July 2023 it was announced that the facility would be built in the town of Weeze in North Rhine–Westphalia, near the border with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. On 1 August 2023 a ceremonial groundbreaking was held for the future plant, and on 2 July 2024 Rheinmetall’s subsidiary, Rheinmetall Aviation Services (RAS), signed an agreement with AERO-Bildungs to provide technical training for employees of the future Weeze facility. The aim is to complete the site in spring 2025 and begin production in the summer of the same year.
The first center fuselage produced in Germany will be handed over to the American partners in the first quarter of 2027. It will be the second such assembly line after the Northrop Grumman F-35 IAL (Integrated Assembly Line) facility in Palmdale, California.
German State Secretary Nils Hilmer visited @LockheedMartin Fort Worth to sign the forward fuselage bulkhead of Germany’s first F‑35A. Final assembly and inaugural flight are set for next year, delivering sovereign security and @Team_Luftwaffe's most capable fighter for NATO. pic.twitter.com/2Ck9PvUyw2
— F-35 Lightning II (@thef35) November 21, 2025
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