Long-running negotiations have brought the trinational FCAS program back from the brink, but the issues have prompted France to examine a national-only Plan B approach.
After months of deadlock, industrial agreements are finally in place to put development of Europe’s Future Combat Air System back on track.
The holdup was largely driven by disagreements over workshare betweeen Germany’s Airbus and France’s Dassault Aviation. But the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) partner nations—France, Germany and Spain—are now hoping to push forward with the signing of multibillion-euro contracts that should lead to development of a New-Generation Fighter (NGF) demonstrator, which is planned to fly in the second half of the decade.
- Dispute was focused on workshare around flight controls
- France initiates work into a Plan B for FCAS
Getting this far has been far from straightforward—and the preceding three weeks were almost as drama-filled as the rest of the project. When Airbus, Spain’s Indra and the German government announced that the industrial partners had concluded negotiations on Nov. 18, there was an unsettling silence from Paris. Rather than confirming the agreement, Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier told a French radio station several days later that the German and Spanish pronouncements had been premature.
When French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne appeared with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a Nov. 25 press conference and was asked about FCAS’ progress, her comments that progress had been made were later disputed by a Dassault spokesperson.
It was not until Dec. 1 that Trappier finally declared that the FCAS “blockages have been lifted.” Speaking to Le Figaro—a newspaper owned by the Dassault family—he insisted that all previous statements about the negotiations had been released in haste. “As long as the industrial agreement was not concluded, it was premature to announce it,” Trappier told the newspaper. “Today it’s done, so we can make it public.” His having the last word on the matter may indicate just how much sway Dassault has over the wider FCAS project.
The company is the authority for France’s combat aircraft capability and the Dassault family is deeply ingrained into French politics and media. Furthermore, the OEM has been buoyed by the success of the Rafale fighter. It has sold, with French government support, dozens of the fighters to the United Arab Emirates, while France is expected to top up its own orders with plans to contract 42 of the jets in 2023.
With such sales, Dassault could afford to wait out the FCAS storm until the arrangements were more favorable to it. But the deadlock—focused around workshare on the flight control systems of the NGF at the heart of the FCAS program-—has potentially cost the program years of delay.
Dassault—which leads the development pillar for the crewed fighter—had refused to allow Airbus to assist on the flight control system, despite the latter’s experience with controls on airliners, combat aircraft and uncrewed aircraft systems. The French OEM was seemingly uncomfortable with sharing its intellectual property and know-how from projects such as Rafale and the Neuron uncrewed combat air vehicle demonstrator.
The Dassault-Airbus dispute has led to mounting frustration because the project has been in the almost unprecedented situation of having not only political backing from all three partner nations but also validated funding in place to proceed. The demonstrator project itself may have been delayed two years as a result—Trappier said it was originally planned to fly in 2027 but that it is now likely to take to the air in 2029.
Who blinked first in the negotiations remains unclear. Trappier said Dassault had faced “pressures from all sides. . . . We put some [pressure], we have suffered [some pressure].” However, he appeared to suggest that Dassault had secured some protections for its technologies and capabilities, noting that a Dassault-developed flight control system would be adopted for the demonstrator, although not necessarily for the wider program. More disputes may yet follow.
“Ownership of the work to be carried out jointly will be shared, but the technologies and know-how that belong to us will not,” he said. But he insisted, despite that statement: “It’s a win-win deal for all parties.”
Concerns that the FCAS program could fracture appear to have been heeded by Paris, where officials were preparing to potentially go it alone should the disagreements with industry fail to be ironed out. An amendment to Paris’ 2023 finance bill has called for the spending of €10 million ($10.5 million) to explore the feasibility of a “national plan B.” “With the obvious difficulty in pursuing negotiations with our partners, we can no longer rule out having to consider the possibility of a ‘national’ alternative to FCAS,” the amendment states.
Industry is now envisioning the national sign-off for Phase 1B to take place in the coming weeks, although there is a requirement in Germany for this to be approved by the parliament in Berlin.
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