Merz axes €100 billion fighter

The partnership that was meant to show Europe could arm itself has fallen apart. Chancellor Friedrich Merz ended the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS programme after nine years, about €4 billion spent, and not a single flying prototype. Europe’s most ambitious defence project died because Dassault Aviation and Airbus could not agree on who would be in charge (aviospace.org, Euronews).

FCAS, the Future Combat Air System, was launched in 2017 to build a sixth-generation fighter, armed drones, and a “combat cloud” linking aircraft, weapons and sensors into one battlefield network. Its projected lifetime cost was €100 billion. The political idea was simple enough: Europe’s two largest economies would prove they could build strategic weapons without depending on the United States. They spent the decade fighting over patents and revenue.

How industrial egos sank a strategic vision

Dassault CEO Éric Trappier demanded around 80% control and refused to share sensitive data with Airbus, despite an original agreement giving France, Germany and Spain equal 33% shares (Euronews, EFE). Security analyst Frank Sauer was blunt: “Ultimately, Éric Trappier torpedoed the fighter project” (n-tv.de).

The corporate row sat on top of a deeper military split. France wanted an aircraft that could carry nuclear weapons and operate from an aircraft carrier. Germany did not. Those are not minor design preferences; they are different doctrines.

Merz had already questioned the logic of the programme in February, arguing that drones mattered more than crewed jets. When he tried a final conversation with Trappier in early June, it “did not go well” (Le Grand Continent).

Three tracks where one should exist

Europe now has the fragmentation its defence tools were supposed to prevent.

France will push ahead with the Rafale F5 upgrade and a combat drone under Dassault’s sole leadership (Dassault Aviation). Germany’s Airbus launched “Team Gen 6” within hours: eight companies proposing a new fighter under German industrial leadership, probably with Sweden’s Saab (Spiegel, Zeit).

Germany’s most realistic fallback, joining GCAP, the UK-Italy-Japan sixth-generation programme, is itself unstable. The programme’s £686 million bridge contract expires on 30 June, and London has not published the defence spending plan needed to unlock long-term funding. BAE Systems warned that more than 4,000 engineers would be redeployed without a follow-on contract (National Security Journal). Germany’s main alternative to building its own fighter may not survive the summer.

Who pays, who shrugs

The European Commission tried to contain the damage. Spokesperson Thomas Reignier said the rearmament agenda “remains very much alive,” pointing to SAFE, the EU’s planned €150 billion defence loan facility, as proof (El Español).

SAFE matters for small states too, even those like Malta that do not buy fighter jets. It is Brussels’ attempt to use cheap loans to push European defence companies into cross-border projects they would not form on their own. FCAS shows the weakness in that theory. Money did not solve the trust deficit between Dassault and Airbus, and SAFE has no clear mechanism to stop the same fight returning under a different name.

Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever called the collapse “complete stupidity” driven by Franco-German “arrogance” (n-tv.de). Poland treated the news as vindication: its first F-35s landed at Łask airbase in May, evidence for Warsaw that buying American works while building European does not (rp.pl).

Spain took the most uneven hit. Indra, Spain’s national FCAS coordinator, fell 4.2% on the Madrid stock exchange the day before the formal announcement (Cinco Días). Defence Minister Robles blamed industry for “putting its interests above European security,” although Spain had entered as the junior partner and had little leverage to stop the Franco-German breakdown (Europapress).

One piece survives: the combat cloud, the networked architecture connecting aircraft, drones and sensors. Both governments confirmed it would continue, with governance to be settled at a Franco-German ministerial council on 17 July (Tagesschau). There are no contracts or funding envelope yet.

The parallel MGCS programme, the Franco-German next-generation tank, has built up its own decade of delays with zero prototypes (Le Grand Continent). Germany must now choose between Team Gen 6, joining GCAP as a late entrant, or buying more American F-35s as a stopgap (Defense News). None of those routes delivers a European sixth-generation fighter before the 2050s.