Belgium Eyes US Combat Drones

Belgian defence minister Theo Francken has reportedly called time on the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS fighter programme and argued that Belgium should look instead to US autonomous drones (La Razón, g-enews). Belgium was never at the heart of FCAS. It had observer status, not the power of a founding partner, so its departure would not by itself finish the project.

The message matters all the same. A NATO country already committed to buying F-35s is looking at Europe's most ambitious air-combat project and judging that Washington is offering something faster, clearer and more useful.

The command problem Brussels can't solve

FCAS was meant to be more than a fighter jet. It was designed as a whole air-combat system: a crewed aircraft, autonomous drone escorts, and a shared digital layer linking sensors, weapons and command across an air force (The Guardian, El País). The idea was European strategic autonomy made visible in metal, software and procurement contracts.

It ran into a question that sounded industrial but was really political: who gets to command the design?

France's Dassault led the fighter element and wanted authority over the architecture, software and export rights. That was not just corporate muscle-flexing. The aircraft was eventually supposed to carry France's nuclear deterrent, which made shared control a matter of sovereignty for Paris (Le Figaro). Germany's Airbus, meanwhile, would not accept a junior role in a programme Berlin was helping to fund at scale (FAZ). Neither side moved far enough. The project stalled.

This is where the EU's defence ambitions meet the limits of its legal power. Fighter procurement remains a national decision under the treaties. Article 346 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union gives member states broad room to make arms purchases on national-security grounds (Article 346). Brussels can put money behind joint research through the European Defence Fund and encourage joint buying through schemes such as EDIP, the European Defence Industry Programme (EDF, EDIP). It cannot appoint the main contractor, hand out design authority, or stop a minister buying American.

The Commission's own EDIP proposal shows the scale of the problem. After the post-2022 rise in defence spending, 78% of member states' procurement went to non-EU suppliers, and 63% went to US suppliers (EDIP proposal). EU policy is supposed to reduce that dependency. Francken's reported position would push in the other direction.

Money is moving faster than European command arrangements

The FCAS rupture hurts each partner differently. France gets short-term freedom to protect Dassault's design sovereignty and pursue a narrower post-Rafale route. But Paris loses co-financing and weakens the argument that Europe can build the next generation of combat aviation without falling back on Washington (Brussels Signal).

Germany is reading the same failure another way. Defence minister Boris Pistorius has spoken about finding "more reliable options", with both an Airbus-led alternative and more F-35s under discussion (Deutschlandfunk). Berlin's leverage is money. France cannot easily fund a sixth-generation fighter alone, even if it wants the industrial control that comes with doing so (FAZ).

Spain, the third FCAS partner, is caught between those positions while facing US pressure to reopen the question of the F-35 (Infobae). For countries on the eastern flank, including Poland, the calculation is less abstract. With Russia next door, interoperability with US systems now carries more weight than a European fighter that may not arrive until around 2040.

That matters for Ireland too, even from the very different starting point of military neutrality. EU defence integration often sounds in Dublin like a constitutional argument waiting to happen. But procurement is where the real shift is already taking place: not through a single grand federal leap, but through national capitals deciding, purchase by purchase, whether European industry can actually deliver.

The competitive pressure is becoming harder to ignore. The US Air Force has already awarded initial production contracts for 150 Collaborative Combat Aircraft, autonomous drones designed to fly alongside crewed jets, to Anduril and General Atomics (Shephard, Forecast International). European programmes are still arguing over governance. American programmes are placing orders.

That is the test Brussels has not yet passed. It has built funding tools. It has created incentives. What it still lacks is a way to settle command before the buyers drift, one by one, towards whatever is already on the shelf.