Europe's most powerful air force

[revojam]

Russia Air Force of course.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

The Horton was not meant to be a stealth fighter, it was later discovered that it indeed had some stealth capabilities.
And yes, the Germans were leading in some areas of aviation but the other nations were often close to them or at the same level. The Brits got Jet fighters before the war ended but never used them in active combat over the European mainland due the fact that the technology was not matured yet.

And the Germans definitely did NOT have air superiority in the early stages of the war! They NEVER managed to defeat the much smaller RAF during the battle of Britain... and thats why they eventually dropped their plans to invade the island.

Todays German pilots are way behind in flight hours compared to other military powers around the world, and that has serious effects when you compare them to other AFs... apart from the already mentioned issue that a huge bulk of their fleet does not even fly.

They do have state of the art technology though like the latest A2A missiles.... but again, their logistics often depend heavily on other nations. But thats no coincident, as cooperation with other NATO allies is integral part of German military doctrine.

bingo on your last sentence

 

[Penguin]

Why even bother to compare air forces of nations that agree by and large to a common defence? There is even talk of specialization in this respect e.g in 2005 the Netherlands dropped its MPA's to focus on other things naval, but Germany picked up the Dutch aircraft to replace its Atlantiques
Military of the European Union - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Zarvan]

I would place Russia on first than comes Britian than France and than Italy and than Germany