Will Franco‑German differences sink €100bn fighter jet plan?

DW News · Feb 19, 2026 · Collected from RSS

Full Article

Michael Schoellhorn, the CEO of Airbus Defence and Space, says the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), the long-planned Franco-German fighter jet and air defense project, will survive but that "there will have to be some restructuring in certain parts." Speaking in an exclusive interview with DW, Schoellhorn, whose company is one of the two main partners in the project, says "there will be an FCAS," but acknowledged the difficulties between his company and the French partner Dassault Aviation. "Yes, there's a problem with the manned-fighter between two companies," he said. "Mine is one of them. It's a danger that if you start on these big European projects, it takes more than political will. It takes the industrial alignment of the players involved." There have been several reports in recent weeks that the €100 billion ($118 billion) air defense system project is close to collapse, partially due to the French partner Dassault Aviation insisting on retaining control over the fighter jet part of the operation.Schoellhorn says the FCAS project always had a wider range of possible collaboration, which can still be salvagedImage: Marek Neumann-Schönwette/DW What's the dispute involving FCAS? FCAS was launched by French President Emmanuel Macron and then German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2017, with Spain joining the project later. However, the project has been left paralyzed due to industrial disputes. There is mounting speculation that it will either be radically restructured or shelved entirely. The original plan was for a fighter jet that would work in seamless coordination with drones, combat cloud technology and weapons. Dassault led on the jet with Airbus's German-based defense wing working on the other components. However, the two companies have been clashing over the specifications of the jet, its development and possible suppliers. Asked if the reports that FCAS is on the brink of collapse were true, Schoellhorn said: "There will be an FCAS. There will have to be some restructuring in certain parts of the project." He noted that the project was conceived at a time when the geopolitical realities were different, before the current defense sector expansion, which has seen a surge in orders for Europe's defense giants. France's Dassault Aviation and Germany's Airbus are central to the FCAS planImage: Nicolas Maeterlinck/BELGA/dpa/picture alliance "We have a totally different world now, and now speed is of the essence. The times when you could define something very precisely with long requirement lists that would then come 15 or 20 years later are over; the speed of change is so rapid that we also need to change the way we develop things. So there's a restructuring of FCAS needed anyway."What is Germany's stand on FCAS? On Wednesday (February 18), German Chancellor Friedrich Merz strongly hinted that the FCAS plan to build a sixth-generation fighter jet for Europe could be shelved, saying the jet currently being planned was better suited for the French army's needs rather than the Bundeswehr's. The downbeat tone mirrors what has come from the French side in recent weeks. A report in Politico quoted French officials as saying that an announcement that the project was over was more likely than a relaunch. An unnamed French lawmaker was quoted as saying, "FCAS is dead. Everyone knows it, but no one wants to say it." "The French need a nuclear-capable aircraft in the next generation of combat aircraft; we don't need that in the German Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) right now," he told the German podcast Machtwechsel. "France only wants to build one thing and wants to practically align it with the specification that France needs. But that's not the one we need. That is why it is not a political dispute, but we have a real problem in the requirement profile. If we can't solve this, then we can't maintain the project." However, Schoellhorn bases the survival of the project on the idea that the project doesn't need to be centered on a single fighter jet and that restructuring could save and possibly strengthen the project. He says there are examples of successful pan-European cooperation in defense, pointing to the successful Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet collaboration between Airbus, the UK's BAE Systems and Italy's Leonardo. "In FCAS, I think we're still struggling with it (collaboration)," he said. "But if we assume that we end up with two fighters in a bigger project that has all these other assets and other means, then that wouldn't be the end of the world. "It wouldn't be the end of Franco-German-Spanish collaboration, and it would actually make FCAS more resilient." What does the FCAS include? Much of the focus on FCAS has been on the idea of France and Germany building a common fighter jet — a so-called sixth-generation, more advanced than the fifth-generation jets currently in service and development. The Franco-German deal is reportedly close to collapseImage: Monasse Thierry/ANDBZ/abaca/picture alliance However, Schoellhorn says the project always had a wider range of possible collaboration, which can still be salvaged. "FCAS is much more than a plane. It's much more than a fighter aircraft," he said. "It is a combat cloud at the very core of it. It is unmanned systems. It is sensors. It's simulation capabilities. Most of that is working extremely well." Germany has already openly discussed a possible scaling back of the project, with recent talks between the two countries focused on dropping the fighter jet component and focusing on a command and control system, known as a "combat cloud." The discussions come as European governments continue to massively ramp up defense spending in the wake of Russia's near four-year invasion of Ukraine. Edited by: Ashutosh Pandey