Defense News:

The German Defense Ministry will leave planned air defense investments and other high-profile programs involving U.S. vendors unresolved in the final months of the Merkel government, officials have told lawmakers.

A Feb. 3 list of “important” but unfunded programs, as officials wrote, includes several trans-Atlantic defense efforts that have been simmering for some time. As a result, American contractor behemoths Lockheed Martin and Boeing are left to wait until a new government re-litigates Germany’s defense acquisition posture sometime after the Sept. 26 election.

Lockheed Martin, along with MBDA Deutschland, has been gunning for a contract on the TLVS missile defense program following more than a year of negotiations and several years of German-American co-development. The program’s prospects turned dimmer last fall, as new requirements drove up costs. Unsurprisingly, TLVS now officially appears on the to-do list for the next chancellor.

Notably, a project aimed at defending against short-range aerial threats, like drones or mortar fire, is also lacking a budget, defense officials wrote to lawmakers…

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