Germany Will Keep Its Order for F-35A Aircraft Despite Criticism

You’re only saying that you don’t know how NATO weapons sharing works. A bunch of major European countries don’t “have” nukes, but effectively have nukes because of weapons sharing and delivery capabilities. The idea being that if the flag actually goes up, cutting that bit of red tape and strapping a B61 onto a Viper or Lightning for a strike mission isn’t going to matter that much legally/treaty-wise, in the grand scheme of things.

Debatable in general, but at least in this instance I don't think that is the issue.

The issue is that for Germany the F35 is not just a plane, but essentially the manifestation of our nuclear deterrence. This isn't like e.g. Poland purchasing both american Abrams and Korean K2 tanks, where the american tanks could be substituted comparatively trivially for more orders of K2 or any european tank like leopard (minus the question of immediate availability), which would functionally fill the same role.

A cancellation of the F35 order would essentially also be a termination of the nuclear sharing policy. Which can't be done lightly and without thought on what should replace it.

Are we fine without? Do we ask France to share theirs and if so, can we trust this to hold, if the next election cycle sees Le Pen gain the power? Or maybe do we develop our own, which would maybe be the biggest shift in policy and also very much have consequences to global politics.

Quite honestly I am not sure how fast these things could be decided, especially considering we are currently in a phase of transition between governments. And neither the still current chancellor Scholz or his likely successor Merz are true leaders.

So this isn't "Germany being Murica's cuck", but either major decisions taking some more time or us going the path of least resistance by trying to change nothing. Only time will tell, because who knows if in a few months they do end up getting cancelled.