PARIS — Denmark received four more F-35 fighter jets on Thursday, with more than half of the country’s ordered fleet of stealth aircraft now stationed on Danish soil, after delivery had been delayed as manufacturer Lockheed Martin struggled to implement an upgrade for the plane.
The four jets joined the fighter wing at Skrydstrup air base after a delivery flight from the Lockheed Martin factories in Texas via the Azores, bringing the number of repatriated F35s to 15, the Danish Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Friday.
The country has ordered 27 of the fighters, of which six are stationed at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for training. The remaining six aircraft that will complete the order are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2026, the defense ministry said.
“With the arrival of the four aircraft yesterday, we have taken another step towards building up the combat capability of the F-35 aircraft,” said Maj. Gen. Jan Dam, the commander of the Royal Danish Air Force.
Lockheed Martin deliveries of F-35 jets were delayed last year due to issues with the so-called Technology Refresh 3 upgrade, or TR-3. That left Denmark scrambling for options to meet F-35 rollout milestones and expand its locally based fleet beyond four aircraft, eventually prompting a decision in June to fly the country’s training aircraft home.
After the Minister of Defence had to inform the government last year that the delivery delays could affect the F-35 program milestones, “the outlook now looks different,” the MoD said.
Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told business newspaper Borsen in March that he wanted to order more F-35 jets, despite threats by U.S. President Donald Trump targeting the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland, with the minister saying Denmark is too small to operate several types of fighter jets.
The Danish Air Force has started to use the F-35 to take over some air-policing missions from the country’s aging F-16 fleet, with the new jets flying their first mission to intercept a Russian military aircraft over the Baltic Sea in late March. The country plans to phase out the F-16 for air defense by the end of 2025, according to the MoD.
Danish F-35s took part in the NATO exercise Ramstein Flag from March 31 to April 11, their first participation in a major exercise, operating from the air base at Skrydstrup.
Denmark has pledged to donate F-16s to Ukraine as part of a coalition with the Netherlands and Norway.
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
