premise: Germany is "prepared in principle" to send Tornado reconnaissance planes to Afghanistan in response to a request from NATO but a decision has not been made, a deputy foreign minister said on Thursday.
  "We are prepared in principle to provide intelligence capacity of this kind," Gernot Erler told Deutschlandfunk radio.
  Erler said that sending the planes would require a change to the parliamentary mandate covering German forces already deployed in Afghanistan, but his ministry later clarified that this was "not necessarily" the case and the request was still being studied.
  Press reports say Germany has been asked to send five or six Tornadoes, which could be used in missions across Afghanistan, including in the south where fighting is fiercest.
  Germany currently has 2,700 troops serving in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan but has resisted pressure to redeploy any of them from the relatively stable calm north to trouble spots in the south and east.
   What would happen if Germany sends five or six Tornado planes?
hypothesis: Germany is "prepared in principle" to send Tornado reconnaissance planes to Afghanistan