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Most of the US orders Germany placed had no proper European alternative:
F35 for nuclear sharing with the US. Integrating it into Eurofighter, would have forced the entire blueprints of those to be handed to the US. Hence only 10 are ordered, with more Eurofighters also having been ordered.
Patriot has SMP/T as a European alternative.
Arrow3 has no European alternative at all.
Chinook is a large helicopter, then anything made in Europe. So no clear cut alternative.
Poseidon P8 nothing in Europe comes close in capability. Germany is part of a group working on one though lead by Airbus.
Those are some large orders, but the rest is mostly European, with maybe some US components. Honestly the German procurment is not especially bad with American components.
MBT both Leopard2 and Leclerc are ITAR free. For fighters Rafael is ITAR free and Eurofighter is pretty close, Austria did have problems with GPS components, but there are alternatives available. Turkey is interessted because Eurofigther is close to that. Only Gripen has a lot of problems.
Also there was no SMP/T when Germany got Patriot systems. So replacing an already existing and working system operated for decades with another one just because it's from the EU is a completely different story than choosing US equipment over existing European ones.
Exactly, but in the media, it was framed as we are always doing our own thing instead buying from US, as this would be faster and cheaper. However, the radical shift of US politcs in the last weeks shows, it was a good choice to avoid US products where possible and we have to develop replacements for those US systems we are currently using too.
Thanks for the information about the cerification procedure of the Eurofighter. I've thought it was more about the time this would take instead of the inherent transfer of knowledge that would go along with it when providing all documentation and blueprints.
It is not inherent transfer of knowledge, as much as it is US politics forcing that transfer. There are already US made weapons integrated into Eurofighter.
Perhaps it's carrying nuclear boms on behalf of the US is what makes this special. It's not like a regular bomb or missile.
I didn't want to write "industrial espionage", but effectively it's not very different from that, except it doesn't happen secretly.