The combat cloud and unmanned drones may yet survive
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.”
