Europe’s fighter jet plans are in disarray. What happens next?

When the former European Central Bank president and Italian prime minister Mario Draghi laid out a plan for Europe to catch up economically with the US and China, collaborating on defence was one of the prescriptions. No more should each country in Europe try to make its own version of a boat, tank or jet but instead share costs and technologies between allies.Europe appears to have fallen at the first hurdle. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, were forced to cancel the joint future combat air system in June, after fraught efforts to work together since 2018.The question exercising defence executives over the summer since then, including when the global aviation industry gathered at July’s Farnborough airshow, is: what happens now? France appears to be content to push ahead with its own fighter jet but Germany has been left questioning whether it will have its own aircraft. It may instead be left as a secondary customer to the rival Tempest jet under the global combat air programme (GCAP) led by the UK, Italy and Japan.Meanwhile, in the UK the debate over the summer has been over the future of military spending, after the resignation of John Healey as defence secretary in June over spending commitments, his return under Andy Burnham as chancellor and continued questions over when the UK will meet its target of spending 3% of GDP on defence.Militaries are racing to develop the sixth generation of fighters since the first jets that flew in the second world war. The Tempest and the US’s F47 will be developed to dominate the air, with AI technologies, more advanced stealth and swarms of drones to fly alongside. (The F47 is named, at least until a Democratic president enters the White House, after Donald Trump, the 47th US president.)France and Germany’s effort foundered amid arguments between France’s Dassault Aviation and the Germany-headquartered Airbus Defence and Space over who would lead the programme. France also reportedly wanted a smaller jet capable of landing on its aircraft carriers, while Germany does not have any aircraft carriers.Scale models from the now-cancelled future combat air system project. Photograph: Charles Platiau/ReutersThe final nail in the coffin came last week, with the French engine maker Safran’s announcement it will end its joint effort to make engines for the fighter jet with Germany’s MTU Aero Engines.A European defence chief executive recently acknowledged that it was not impossible for there to be as many as three European fighter jets if Germany were to try to build one (possibly with partners) to rival GCAP and France. “It would not be ideal,” the boss said, slightly abashed.Three is too many, according to pretty much anyone without a financial interest in winning work share.“No way we end up with three,” one UK-based consultant who works with many of the big prime manufacturers said. “There’s no order book for it. You need an order book to make these economical.”The same person believes that it is unlikely that there will even be two European fighters, given the strained economics. Fighter jet programmes are considered a success in industrial terms if they can make hundreds – about 600 is seen as a good benchmark. That is far beyond the size of any single European air force. France has 228 Rafale fighter jets in service, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a thinktank.Dassault is determined to press on. Éric Trappier, the chief executive of Dassault Aviation, last month said a next-generation combat jet could be developed solely in France or in cooperation with other partners. He wants a demonstrator to be flying as early as 2031.The outlines of the story are already familiar to many in the defence industry. In the early 1980s European nations were looking at building a fourth generation of fighter jets. France joined Italy, Spain, West Germany and Britain in a joint effort. Yet disputes over workshare and the capabilities of the final product grew until France walked away. Dassault ended up building the Rafale, while the other four countries are still building the Eurofighter Typhoon 30 years after its first flight.Yet some people are sceptical that Dassault would be able to create something with the same stealth abilities as other sixth-generation jets. Dassault could create a “Rafale plus” or “Super Rafale” with newer radar, weaponry and digital systems, and an upgraded engine, but without a complete redesign to put it at the very cutting edge. The Rafale upgrade already in development for the early 2030s will be able to work in partnership with stealth drones.Another important question – one faced by every air force, including the US and the GCAP partners – is whether a crewed fighter will be outdated by the time it is operating in 2035. However, the consensus in the industry for now appears to be that crewed fighters will still be required, but surrounded by a swarm of “loyal wingmen” drones such as BAE Systems’s Brontanax that can be sent into harm’s way over the horizon by the crewed jet fighter lurking further back.For Germany that leaves the somewhat embarrassing option of asking to join GCAP. Canada joined GCAP at Farnborough but only as an “observer”. That could put it front of the queue to buy products but does not entitle it to the politically valuable manufacturing jobs that come with status as a core partner. (Wealthy Saudi Arabia is also pushing to join, although it does not have much technological knowhow to offer and would be heavily criticised over its human rights record.)“They are very expensive platforms, and having assured orders for them is very helpful,” said Kevin Craven, the chief executive of ADS, the UK aerospace and defence lobby group. “I think there’s a realisation across Europe and Nato that the very expensive platforms require collaboration.”There are “elements of the sixth generation programmes that could work across Europe”, he added.Some of the industrial partners are open to Germany joining. Lorenzo Mariani, the chief executive of Leonardo, Italy’s lead defence company in GCAP, said Germany would be a “positive element” and a “strong financial partner, financially the strongest in Europe”. However, another core partner would add to the risk of delays, he acknowledged.An artist’s impression of two next-generation fighter jets flying in the airspace near Mount Fuji in Japan. The UK is developing a jet with Italy and Japan. Photograph: Japanese defence ministry/EPAReopening discussions to let in another core member could be tricky. The UK, Italy and Japan set up a joint venture called Edgewing to build the Tempest. Marco Zoff, Edgewing’s chief executive, said its aim was “creating the conditions not to fight”. Another insider described it as “having all our fights at the start” over who gets what work, clearing the way for rapid development to be in the air by 2035.Tufan Erginbilgiç, the chief executive of the Tempest jet engine maker Rolls-Royce, told reporters at Farnborough that “I don’t think it will negatively impact GCAP at all” if Germany joins – although he would not be drawn on whether Rolls could share work with MTU.“It is not surprising that more countries are interested, and that will make the programme even more successful because to me it means more markets,” he said.Michael Schoellhorn, the chief executive of Airbus Defence and Space, told reporters in London that the company would join something where they could “have a significant portion of the work and the leadership. That’s currently being explored.”Yet once European executives come back from their summer holidays, they will have to work quickly if they are to avoid the fragmentation that Draghi warned against. Failure to do so would risk repeating the mistakes of the past of building several alternatives that all have to compete against each other for export orders.A European consultant covering the defence industry said: “It would mean we don’t learn.”