After a year of uncertainty, France and Germany finally announced on Friday 18 November that they had reached a new agreement to launch the next stage of development of Europe’s future ‘sixth generation’ fighter aircraft. A step that corresponds to the construction of a demonstrator, essential to complete this project called the “air combat system of the future” (SCAF), and which should replace, by 2040, the French Rafale of Dassault Aviation and the Airbus Eurofighter Typhoon.
Germany fired the first shot on Friday 18 November. “After intense negotiations, an agreement has been reached between the industrialists”the Defense Ministry said in a statement released at the end of the day. “The political agreement on FCAS is a big step forward and above all, in the current international context, an important sign of excellent collaboration”he reacted in the wake of the Elysée, while specifying that the industrial agreement that must accompany it is unique “about to be finished”.
In fact, this political announcement still needs to be ratified by the signing of a contract in good and due form between the manufacturers, something that was never fully achieved until the final signature. “We can confirm that discussions between industry and governments on the next phase of FCAS have been successful”thus prudently indicating Airbus, shortly after the Berlin announcement, while, on the part of Dassault, it was decided to abstain from any comment and not to issue a press release.
Deep technical differences
A situation directly related to the very high stakes of this contract, while deep technical differences between Dassault and Airbus Defense and Space, in particular on the sharing of flight controls intellectual property, have long hindered the progress of the SCAF. Of all the players in this vast Franco-German industrial project launched in 2017, which Spain joined at the end of 2019, and whose cost is estimated at over 100 billion euros, Dassault is the party that has the most to lose.
In fact, the SCAF is not just an airplane, but a global system made up of nine “technological pillars”, including drones. However, even though the French aircraft manufacturer is the prime contractor for the aircraft itself, its rival Airbus, building on its experience in Eurofighter and its commercial aircraft, has sought from the outset to also participate in the development of the ordering system. But Dassault fears that sharing certain technologies will be fatal in the long run, and end up engulfing the family business in a vast European consortium. A scenario that many observers do not entirely escape.
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