German pilots also train with American nukes. You can’t just slap a nuke on a plane and treat it like any other bomb. And in peacetime, a jury rigged attachment loosing a bomb would be a publicity disaster:)

Thanks, that makes sense.

How about using some mock nukes? Unless you're dropping it, as long as it has the same weight and dimensions, who cares if it goes boom or fizz?

Because you still need to test that stuff before using it. And yes, if it was accute, testing and certification would go fast (see COVID vaccines), but it would still be tested. In reality, having a platform able to carry nukes is Germanies way to be, and stay, part of NATO's nuclear weapon councils. For sure, Germany could also buy Rafales and use French nukes, but that would create such a public outcry that the only result would be no nukes at all anymore for Germany regardless of whose nukes Germany is borrowing.

Edit: The reason for the outcry over French nukes is not that they are French, but rather the need to change the laws around nuclear participation to allow the switch. And that legislative changes would lead to a ton of public debate everyone wants to avoid, as this debate would kill nuclear participation in general. So nobody in governmant wants to take this risk, hence the procurement of a US platform to replace the aging Tornado fleet as a carrier of US nukes.

Again, forgive my ignorance: why would anyone (aside from plane salesmen) care whether German planes carry French or American nukes? Are the French people that opposed to sharing with the Germans? That's for the insight!

The German public cares, US nukes are kind of an accepted, and mostky ignored reality. French nukes would wake up the public. The big party that cares about US nukes on non-US planes, e.g. Eurofighter, is the Pentagon. As they have to certify the aircraft, they are a lot less eager to do that fast or at all. Because the Pentagon prefers NATO nations, or any other allied nation, to buy the F-35 over other models.

And the French, which excluded their nukes from NATO oversight, might actually be reluctant to share them with Germany. Using Rafales insteads of Eurofoghters might helo, but then Germany is in the same position it is with the F-35. With the added "benefit" of a potentially hurtful public debate.

The French would be okay.

But German defense policy is built around self-defense and coalition defense: NATO, EU, UN. Nuclear weapons are opposed by Germany, and it's only because NATO is viewed as essential that nuclear sharing is accepted. Most Germans don't know about it though. A bilateral (FR-GE) extension of nuclear policy would be politically unacceptable to Germany, and require extensive legal change.

The French proposal was intended as an incentive to make nuclear policy evolve and think about common European interests, and wasn't really meant to be practical. As you state, it would require to change German constitutional law. It also reflects France's position as a nuclear power that doesn't partake in US-NATO nuclear planning and sharing (this in turn would be unacceptable to the French political class and public opinion).

I think the German acquisition of F-35s is a bit subtle. The Luftwaffe always wanted to buy F-35. I suspect they stalled the subject of the Eurofighter nuclear certification (which would take a good ten years) to force the German government to buy F-35s to keep its commitment to nuclear sharing. The whole thing happened at a time where the ministry of defence seemed disorganized and plagued by scandals. To be coherent with the Eurofighter policy, nuclear certification should have been a top priority ten years ago...

The relationship between the German government, the Luftwaffe, the US industry (and Lockheed...) and the German aerospatial industry has always been complex, and Germany has often been keen to use allied programs to avoid internal defense industry problems, with more or less success. See the Starfighter article on Wikipedia for the most egregious example.

With the German industry stalling the French-German-Spanish fighter project, I also suspec

The German Luftwaffe, Defence ministry and Lockheed have a colored history for sure. It would be a pitty so if the Germans manage to kill FCAS... NGAD, the US equivilant, seems to be a) not for export and b) not so well suited for the European theatre. so it is either FCAS, more F-35s (something Airbus would lobby heavily against) or a domestic program. And the latter seems to be unaffordable, the French would likely go alone as they did with Rafale out of principle. And Germany isn't Sweden neither.

The main pain point in all those large European defence programs is industrial workshare, especially between France and Germany and within Airbus between various sites.

Because you can't just strap a nuke to a pylon, pull the safety pin from the fuze and fly off into the sunset in your cowboy hat.

You need an extensive set of avionics to control and arm the nuke in the plane which add substantial cost and aren't designed for/integrated into all aircraft.