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The FCAS mockup was consigned to the side-lines of the Dassault stand, but Dassault CEO Éric Trappier put its work share in the Le Bourget spotlight.
The coming months will be critical in determining whether the French-German-Spanish effort to develop a new fighter continues from arranged marriage to amicable future or heads toward toxic divorce.
The high-profile program that aims to replace sizable numbers of Eurofighter Typhoons in Germany and Spain as well as Dassault Aviation’s Rafale in France is at risk of breaking apart amid frustration among its partners over progress, work allocation and a path forward.
- Schedule delays underpin French anxiety
- “Cooperation isn’t an easy endeavor,” Airbus executive says
Tensions that had flared in the past resurfaced when Dassault CEO Éric Trappier used the Paris Air Show as a platform on which to demand program supremacy for France and his company, suggesting that anything else would lead to a technologically inferior product.
The Future Combat Air System (FCAS, or SCAF in French) combines a crewed fighter to be fielded in the 2040s with a sophisticated, expendable uncrewed combat aircraft and a combat cloud network that ties it all together. Each country contributes an equal share, and industry should receive equitable work with leadership in certain areas. France, for instance, is on point for the future fighter, while Germany leads the collaborative combat aircraft portion.
Trappier’s broadside made the FCAS spat a major talking point at the biennial industry gathering. “Cooperation isn’t an easy endeavor,” Jean-Brice Dumont, head of airpower at Airbus Defense and Space, told reporters at the air show. “When you cooperate, you create an interdependency between partners.
“We don’t challenge that there is an appointed leader for the fighter program: That leader is named Dassault,” Dumont said. However, others deserve a fair share, and the partnership “doesn’t have to become toxic,” he added.
Differences are resurfacing as the partners approach the next phase of development, in which demonstrators should start flying. Tensions have increased because of program slippage caused by previous rounds of bickering among the partners and by the COVID-19 pandemic, which slowed cooperation since the efforts began in 2019.
France is growing anxious that the fighter will not be ready by 2045, which threatens to cause a gap in its air-launched nuclear deterrent, since delays have eroded schedule margin. Those supporting a go-it-alone approach—mirroring France’s departure from the Eurofighter to develop the Rafale in the 1980s—want to be in full control of the program. They appear keen to forgo the multicomponent scope of the FCAS that France could not afford on its own. In contrast, those who want to maintain the partnership, contend that the program should be a more comprehensive system and that it is critical to keeping alive a flagship European collaboration effort.
A consensus is emerging that defense ministers from the three countries might have to hammer out differences and give clear guidance. But the clock is ticking. Funding for the current development period, Phase 1B, runs out next year. Absent a contract for Phase 2, the companies involved could reassign the thousands of engineers working on the program, creating further delays, even if the program could be salvaged, program officials warn.
What could help is that Germany has felt a greater urgency to act since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As Airbus Defense and Space CEO Michael Schoellhorn told Aviation Week, Berlin also realizes that if the program comes too late, the vital export market could be lost to rival next-generation fighter programs, such as the Global Combat Air Program jointly conducted by Italy, Japan and the UK or Boeing’s F-47 being developed for the U.S. Air Force.
On the eve of the Paris Air Show, Schoellhorn used the Paris Air Forum to argue for expediting collaborative combat aircraft developments so they can operate alongside current-generation fighters “to create enough affordable combat mass in 2029-30.”
One of the questions with which program officials are grappling is how to keep Spain happy in the program, especially if work packages are reallocated to expedite the work. Spain is an equal partner and has leadership on expendable drones, but it is considered the weakest industrially. Keeping Madrid satisfied could mean giving Spain a greater role in the training system or aircraft maintenance.
Dumont expressed confidence that the issues can be resolved “with smart workshare and the proper rules of engagement.” He added that “the bottom line for Airbus on this, in this situation, is we are committed to the program.”
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