Germany’s decision to walk away from the fighter jet at the heart of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) is now raising questions about whether the three partners can salvage parts of the €100 billion project.

The collapse of the programme, announced earlier this week, followed years of, at times, combative, political and industrial back-and-forth over the diverging needs of Germany and France’s armed forces and the labour distribution expectations of Airbus Defence and Dassault Aviation.

Now all three partners – France, Germany and Spain – have to figure out how to continue.

“The key was the jet, that was where most of the money was, where most of the industrial output was,” Emil Archambault, defence expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said. “It seemed like that acted like an anchor for the rest of the project.”

Defence ministers from Berlin and Paris have been tasked with quickly drawing up a joint work plan for “defence industrial cooperation” that would focus on “a few realistic, relevant projects”.

The FCAS project was divided into seven different pillars, each focusing on a different element of the aerial combat system, with a company from each of the three participating countries taking the lead on different aspects.

“The cards are now being reshuffled,” Ronja Kempin, a defence policy expert on Franco-German relations at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), said. “All potential partners know that Germany has plenty of money at its disposal and can actually afford such a project.”

Renegotiations to come

France essentially only had the lead in developing the fighter jet. With that part removed, the fragile leadership balance has been upended.

The combat cloud and the unmanned accompanying drones – the other essential parts of the project – are currently led by Germany’s Airbus Defence. Spain’s Indra is in charge of the sensor technology, while the Spanish arm of Airbus Defence has the lead on developing stealth capabilities.

“Work on the combat cloud and related digital and physical infrastructures should continue. Similarly, the FCAS remote carriers and other autonomous systems are worth pursuing further,” Rafael Loss, defence fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said.

“Killing the next-generation fighter will likely result in the parties having to renegotiate workshares for these other files, but there are very good reasons to do so,” he added.

Archambault similarly expects “that there will still be a push to develop parts of the project in common, particularly on the sensors and the cloud.”

One of the questions hanging over the whole thing is whether Spain will support Germany in the renewed negotiations over the remaining elements.

Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles said on Tuesday that the country “needs” a sixth-generation fighter jet, will do “everything possible” to secure one, and will, as such, “explore many alternatives”. The FCAS platform “will not be joint, but the combat cloud could be,” she said.

The other question, of course, is which way Germany will now turn to build its fighter jet. It could, for instance, decide to join another international programme, as Pistorius outlined on Tuesday.

If that is the case, Kempin doubts that a “Franco-German cloud solution should be of particular interest” to new partners.

Still, Archambault sees a chance for the two countries to set a new industry standard with the combat cloud that new partners would be willing to join.

All of this is expected to be raised at the next Franco-German cabinet meeting in July.

While the acrimony of the past few years is set to leave a mark, “it is still too early—and too simplistic—to assert that a ‘domino effect’ is inevitable,” Samuel Faure, a defence industry expert at France’s military research institute IRSEM, said. “But it is a plausible risk: one failure triggering another.”

(at, aw)