It’s the most expensive single defense project in Europe, with a projected cost of at least €100 billion ($116.6 billion). From 2040, the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) aims to combine a new European fighter jet with fleets of drones controlled via a European defense cloud.
“It’s more like a flying combat system,” Christian Mölling, a German security expert, told DW. The goal is to reduce European dependence on the United States and the F-35 fighter jets, equipped with stealth technology, that the US produces.
However, the two companies involved — Dassault in France, and Airbus in Germany and Spain — are embroiled in a dispute, primarily about the manufacture of the plane itself.
Pressure from the French manufacturer Dassault
This row has now escalated to the point that the big bosses have had to step in. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, unexpectedly announced that they would be attending the Franco-German Defense and Security Council meeting in the French city of Toulon on Friday. The council meets twice a year, usually without attracting much attention from the general public.
In recent months, however, Eric Trappier, the CEO of the French fighter jet manufacturer Dassault, has been piling on the pressure. His company makes key components for France’s nuclear deterrent, which is a fundamental part of the country’s military independence.
In April, Trappier played the national card before the defense committee in the French parliament. Some people, he said, were of the opinion that the “weakening of this independence,” which the FCAS project would bring about, “was not that damaging” as the mutual dependence of the European partners would compensate for it. Trappier, however, argued that “once you take this step, there’s no going back.”
Airbus Germany insists on a share of production
France must, therefore, weigh up very carefully “what we would be ceding to our allies,” said Trappier. To proponents of a pan-European arms industry, these are provocative words.
Political leaders will have to decide with whom France is to build the next-generation fighter jet.
The European aircraft manufacturer Airbus also insists that it must have a say. Airbus Germany manufactures the Eurofighter, the fighter jet currently used by the German air force, and doesn’t want to lose this business.
“It is something Germany does very well, and Germany would like to maintain that,” the armaments expert Emil Archambault, from the Berlin think tank the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), told DW.
Contract negotiations for phase two
The Franco-German row has now escalated because the contracts for the next phase of the project are currently under negotiation. This second phase involves the construction of the first prototype of the plane that will be at the heart of the new system. Dassault is demanding even greater decision-making power in this phase than it already has.
Archambault pointed out that the precise distribution could be changed: “For example, so that France builds a larger part of the plane,” while boosting production of other elements in Germany and Spain. “But that can also be very complicated. Because it’s not only the main companies that are involved; there are the medium-sized suppliers as well. It’s a question of who exactly does what, and who coordinates it.” In an online ad campaign, Airbus certainly wants to convey the impression that it is the technological leader.
Political signal expected in Toulon
Archambault didn’t expect the meeting of the French and German leaders in Toulon to yield much more than a “political signal” that their two countries would continue to collaborate on the project. He pointed out that they could hardly go into contractual details when the third partner in the enterprise — Spain — was absent.
But they are running out of time. During Macron’s visit to Berlin in July, he and Merz agreed that their defense ministers would present a definitive solution by the autumn. If they don’t, it will no longer be realistic for the second phase of the project to begin next year.
Right now, though, the German chancellor probably has the better arguments — and above all, more money. France is deeply in debt, and its government may be about to collapse if it doesn’t get majority backing for its budget.
“What’s unusual is that Germany is in the unique position of not currently having to prioritize between short-term and long-term armament projects, because defense spending has been exempted from the debt brake,” said security expert Mölling.
Rapid rearmament more important than future-oriented projects?
Mölling added that, in light of the threat from Russia and Moscow’s war in Ukraine, Germany currently had “a very short-term armaments agenda, which is to buy more of what we already have, and what works. Then there are future-oriented projects like FCAS: They’re not as important right now.” Mölling thought that it was not out of the question that the FCAS project would be slimmed down, or the timeline extended.
However, he imagined that a change of perspective could also help to deescalate the row with the French manufacturer Dassault.
“Even if some people don’t like to hear it,” he explained, with a nod to France’s pride in its fighter jet production, “the jet — that is, the airframe — is by no means the most important technology” involved in FCAS. In Mölling’s view, the drones, the “so-called carriers,” were far more important, while the “Combat Cloud,” the software that links all the combat systems together, was perhaps more important still.
More important than the fighter jet: digital networking
Mölling pointed out that we were currently seeing this in the defense of Ukraine, in which drones play a central role. It’s not the drones themselves that are helping Ukraine to defend itself, he explained; it’s the networking of the available information: drone imaging, satellites, reconnaissance.
“That is basically the key thing we need to perfect,” he said, “also and especially if we want to be independent of the Americans” — which everyone involved does want..
For this reason, he did not think that FCAS would be abandoned. He expected Macron and Merz to make that clear: “It can’t die. So if the two of them are going [to the meeting], it’s a boost of energy, a clear political signal” that FCAS will have a future. Eventually.
This article has been translated from German.
