1st time Germany deplays air force fleet to Indo Pacific after WW2

 

German Air Force shows it can be in Asia in a day

 

 

On the Twitter account of the German Air Force (@Team_Luftwaffe) a countdown clock started ticking on Monday after the first of its 13 aircraft left Neuburg Air Base, en route to Singapore.
 
 

It was the first deployment of an air force fleet to the Indo-Pacific in the post-World War II era and the challenge was to touch down in Singapore within a day. When the first plane arrived, Team Luftwaffe proudly tweeted #MissionAccomplished.
 
As the exercise name "Rapid Pacific 2022" suggests, the goal is to project to the world that the Germans can arrive in the Indo-Pacific swiftly and contribute to any mission. A Ministry of Defense spokesperson told Nikkei, "We want to show that we stand for multilateralism and the rules-based international order, together with our security partners."
 
That sounds like a dig at China, a country that Germany has bent over backwards to engage and do business with. The new German government has shifted directions and is moving away from the China-heavy Asia policy its predecessors pursued.
 
In an interview with Nikkei, Michael Muller, a heavyweight with the ruling Social Democratic Party and a former mayor of Berlin, emphasized, "We must ensure that we do not get into new dependencies with China. This is the lesson from the current Russia-Ukraine crisis."