Belgium pivots from FCAS to US drones

Belgian Defence Minister Theo Francken has reportedly written off the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS fighter programme and argued that Belgium should turn instead to US autonomous drones (La Razón, g-enews). Belgium was never one of the programme's core partners. It had observer status, so its departure would not by itself bring FCAS down.

But the message matters more than the formal role. A NATO ally already buying F-35s is effectively saying that Europe's most ambitious air-combat project looks slower, riskier and less useful than what the United States can sell today. For small EU states, Malta included, this is the familiar defence dilemma in sharper form: European autonomy sounds right in Brussels, but procurement officers buy what works, what arrives on time, and what plugs into NATO.

The command problem Brussels can't solve

FCAS was meant to be more than a fighter jet. It was designed as a networked air-combat system: a crewed aircraft, autonomous drone escorts, and a shared data layer linking sensors, weapons and command across an air force (The Guardian, El País). The dispute that stalled it sounded like an industrial quarrel. In reality, it was about political control.

France's Dassault led the fighter part of the programme and wanted authority over the aircraft's architecture, software and export rights. That was not just corporate pride. The aircraft was expected, eventually, to carry France's nuclear deterrent, which made shared design control a sovereignty issue for Paris (Le Figaro). Germany's Airbus, meanwhile, refused to accept a secondary role in a programme Berlin was helping to finance at scale (FAZ). Neither government gave way. The programme froze.

The EU has no clean lever to resolve that kind of fight. Fighter procurement remains a national competence under the treaties. Article 346 TFEU gives member states broad room to make arms purchases on national-security grounds (Article 346). Brussels can fund joint research through the European Defence Fund and encourage joint procurement through tools such as EDIP, the European Defence Industry Programme (EDF, EDIP). It cannot choose the prime contractor, allocate design authority, or stop a minister from buying American kit.

The Commission's own EDIP proposal shows why this matters. After the post-2022 surge in defence spending, 78% of member states' procurement went to non-EU suppliers, and 63% went to US suppliers (EDIP proposal). EU strategic autonomy is supposed to reduce that dependence. Francken's reported move would push it in the opposite direction.

Money is moving faster than European command arrangements

The FCAS breakdown leaves each partner exposed in a different way. France gains short-term freedom to defend Dassault's design sovereignty and pursue a narrower post-Rafale route. It also loses co-financing and weakens the claim that Europe can build combat aviation without falling back on Washington (Brussels Signal).

Germany's Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has described the next step as finding "more reliable options", with an Airbus-led alternative and further F-35 purchases both under discussion (Deutschlandfunk). Berlin's strongest card is money. France cannot easily fund a sixth-generation fighter alone without a wealthy partner (FAZ).

Spain, the third FCAS partner, is caught between the French and German positions while also facing US pressure to reopen the F-35 question (Infobae). For eastern-flank states such as Poland, the calculation is less theoretical. With Russia as the immediate threat, interoperability with US systems now carries more weight than a European fighter expected around 2040.

The market is moving faster than Europe's governance talks. The US Air Force has already awarded initial production contracts for 150 Collaborative Combat Aircraft, autonomous drones built to fly alongside crewed jets, to Anduril and General Atomics (Shephard, Forecast International). European programmes are still arguing over who gets to decide. American programmes are placing orders.

That is the real test for EU defence policy. Brussels has built the funding instruments and the incentives. What it still lacks is a way to settle command before national buyers, one after another, choose the system that is already on the shelf.