France and Germany have agreed to abandon their joint next-generation fighter plane project after months of deadlock, according to German officials.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz and President Emmanuel Macron reportedly reached the decision on the sidelines of the EU-Western Balkans summit in Montenegro last week, concluding there was no viable path forward for the €100 billion program.
The project, initially launched in 2017 by Macron together with former German chancellor Angela Merkel, was planning on developing a new fighter aircraft supported by drones and a secure digital ‘combat cloud’—a battlefield-wide data network. It had been stalled by disputes over design requirements and control.
As late as in April, Merz said the project was not dead, despite the two countries having fundamentally different requirements: While France wanted an aircraft that could operate from aircraft carriers and carry nuclear weapons, Germany did not. A two-aircraft solution put on the table was ruled out by Macron, who said Europe needs “standardizing, simplifying, and therefore having a common model.”
Officials are reportedly considering keeping the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) name for some of the technologies to preserve parts of the initiative without declaring the entire program dead.
