Germany and France appear to be ending their plans to build the next generation of fighter aircraft together, according to a report aired by DW. Several media outlets say the governments in Berlin and Paris are on the verge of announcing that they will not continue work on the joint fighter jet component of the Future Combat Air System, known as FCAS.
The state-of-the-art aircraft had been on the drawing board for years and was supposed to enter service in the 2040s. It was meant to replace existing warplanes, such as the Eurofighter, and stood as one of Europe's most ambitious joint defence projects.
According to the report, the breakdown came down to industrial and technical disagreements. The main companies involved, Airbus and Dassault, had been unable to agree on how to divide up the work, while German and French military planners also had different specifications for the new aircraft.
Ulrike Franke, a defence and military technology analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the project had faced problems from the very beginning. It was launched in 2017, and questions over what the French and the Germans each needed were present from the start.
In terms of money, the actual spending on the programme so far is described as being in the low to mid single-digit billions, having gone largely into studies and early development rather than full production.
According to the analysis, the bigger loss is less about the money and more about the time that has been lost, as well as the political focus poured into a project that now has to be reimagined or replaced. With that, time is running out to field a replacement on the original schedule.
The reported collapse would leave Europe's two largest military powers needing to rethink how to develop a next-generation fighter, even though the original timeline had pointed to entry into service only in the 2040s. A formal announcement from Berlin and Paris was still awaited.