The European fighter plan of the future is advancing, but tensions persist in Paris and Berlin. Germany demands free access to Dassault’s industrial secrets.
France and Germany intend to validate “by spring” the industrial agreement to lead in 2026 to the production of a flight demonstrator of the Air Combat System of the Future (SCAF).
But until then, new disputes will have to be settled. First, Germany would like to get its hands on certain technologies developed by Dassault for use in other programs. For Dassault Aviation and Airbus, this is out of the question.
The chief of staff of the German Air Force Ingo Gerhartz even mentioned Berlin’s refusal to deal with technological “black boxes” over which it could not have control due to lack of intellectual property.
Another point to settle, the distribution of tasks. Angela Merkel believes that this sharing is in favor of France.
“We know that it is a project under French direction but it must be a project where the two countries play on an equal footing and there are still many questions to be clarified”, declared the chancellor in videoconference with Emmanuel Macron during the Franco-German defense council last week.
An agreement before the next elections
Confident, the French President explained that an agreement could be found in the coming days.
“In the next few weeks, we will have raised the last remaining points and I am then hopeful that, by the spring, we can arrive at the administrative and political validations which are expected to keep the calendar and our ambitions, “French President Emmanuel Macron said after a Franco-German defense council with Angela Merkel.
The two countries, associated with Spain, hope to validate before the German elections in September and the presidential election in France in spring 2022 the industrial study contracts (phase 1B) to carry out a flight demonstrator of the SCAF. This nevertheless presupposes an agreement between executives, the vote of the budget in the Bundestag and the signing of contracts with industrialists.
The validation of the agreement would greatly complicate any possible future inclination to abandon the project, because of the amount then invested: one billion euros for phase 1B out of a total of 6 billion to lead to the demonstrator, according to a source close to the folder. At this stage, the two countries have equally committed 150 million euros in February 2020 for the first demonstrator studies (phase 1A) scheduled over 18 months.
The Scaf must replace the French Rafale and German and Spanish Eurofighter by 2040. More than a combat aircraft, it is a system composed of a device connected to squadrons of drones.
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