PARIS — Denmark indicated plans to join a European pool of air-to-air refueling tankers, including the potential purchase of two Airbus A330 MRTT refueling aircraft, with Danish participation in the joint capacity estimated to cost about 7.4 billion Danish kroner ($1.1 billion) over the 2025-2033 period.
Danish Chief of Defence Gen. Michael Hyldgaard has recommended Denmark become a partner in the six-nation Multinational Multi-Role Tanker Transport Fleet, initially through the purchase of flight hours for air refueling, followed by negotiations to buy a share in the pool equivalent to two refueling aircraft, the Ministry of Defence said on March 25.
Aerial refueling is one of several critical defense enablers where Europe partly relies on U.S. capacities, a dependency that appears increasingly risky as the American government disengages from Europe. The stakes may be even higher for Denmark, as U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.
The Danish air force operates F-16 and F-35 fighter jets.
The tanker capacity will strengthen the air defense of Denmark and “increase the fighting power of the Danish defense, including our national operational needs,” Danish Minister of Defence Troels Lund Poulsen said. “For example, air refueling capacity creates the precondition for operations with combat aircraft in the Arctic and the North Atlantic.”
The Danish government in February agreed to allocate an additional 50 billion kroner to defense over the coming two years, boosting defense spending to more than 3% of GDP in 2025 and 2026.
The multinational tanker fleet consists of nine MRTT aircraft, owned and managed by NATO, pooling the resources of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Norway, Belgium and Czechia. The six European countries have one more tanker on order for delivery in 2026.
Poelsen said “there is good potential for Nordic cooperation in the field” of air refueling.
The fleet is operated from Eindhoven in the Netherlands, with aircraft also stationed in Cologne, Germany, both around 460 kilometers southwest of the Danish border. The joint tanker fleet was first proposed in 2012, and initiated by the European Defence Agency to address what NATO calls a “long-standing shortfall” in European air-to-air refueling capacity.
The Airbus A330 MRTT is a multirole aircraft that in addition to carrying 110 metric tons of kerosene can also be used to transport passengers or cargo, with a 45-ton payload capacity. The aircraft can use a boom to refuel aircraft including the F-16 and F-35, and a probe and drogue system for Eurofighter, Tornado, F-18, Gripen and Rafale.
Germany is the biggest user of the joint tanker fleet in terms of flight hours, ahead of Belgium and the Netherlands. The fleet started with the Netherlands and Luxembourg jointly buying two A330 MRTTs in 2016, with five additional aircraft ordered in 2017 after Germany and Norway joined the project, with additional tankers ordered in following years after Belgium and Czechia joined.
In addition to the six-nation pool, the other A330 MRTT operators in Europe are France with a fleet of 12 of the aircraft and three more on order, and the U.K. with 14 tankers, according to Airbus data at the end of February.
Denmark’s chief of defense also proposes to invest around 4.7 billion kroner in the 2025-2033 period to accelerate the buildup of the Army’s 1st Brigade into a heavy brigade by three to five years, with the construction of two infantry companies, a tactical drone section, a mechanical engineering company and off-road trucks.
Denmark said it established an air-defense wing at the Flyvestation Skalstrup military facility, ahead of the acquisition of ground-based air defenses, according to a separate statement on Wednesday. The country officially decommissioned the air defense units operating Hawk missile systems there in 2005.
The government said it will look for an interim air-defense solution that can be delivered as early as this year or next year, and pick the system for a permanent solution this year, with a target to finalize the contract by the end of 2025.
Denmark earlier this month shortlisted the French-Italian SAMP/T and the U.S. Patriot system to cover the high end of the threat spectrum in its planned purchase of air defense systems, while MBDA’s VL MICA system, Kongsberg’s NASAMS, the IRIS-T SLM from Diehl Defence and the U.S. IFPC. are in competition for the lower end.
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.
