Europe has been repeating the same debate for some time every time a strategic technology comes into play: to what extent can talk about sovereignty whether critical systems depend on external decisions, codes and suppliers. Under labels such as autonomy or digital sovereignty, the Union has tried build own alternatives in key areas with the promise of no longer being tied to infrastructures that it does not fully control. History now shows that the challenge has not been to imagine these tools, but to get the major European partners to accept share real power to make them possible.
A project for European sovereignty. He Future Combat Air System was born as the great strategic bet of France, Germany and Spain to prevent Europe will be relegated in the 21st century air race, combining a sixth-generation fighter with swarms of drones and a combat cloud capable of integrating sensors, weapons and command in real time.
Designed to replace platforms such as the Rafale and the Eurofighter and preserve industrial knowledge that Europe never developed in the fifth generation, the FCAS was presented as more than just an airplane: it was the promise of technological autonomy against the United States, its own air war architecture and the symbol that European defense could act as a coherent block.
A lost decade. From its inception, the program was trapped in a head-on crash between national and industrial interests, with France defending leadership Dassault’s absolute in the manned aircraft and Germany demanding distribution real technology and knowledge through Airbus. For its part, Spain was seen as a clearly secondary partner despite its key role in sensors through Indra.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine further hardened positions: Berlin, in the midst of the Zeitenwende, began to question a project that did not guarantee its own capabilities. Paris, reinforced by the Rafale export successbecame even more reluctant to give up control. The result was a prolonged paralysisdeadlines that moved towards 2045 and the idea, increasingly less hidden, that the fighter could disappear leaving only remains of the original project.
Germany begins to look home. The fracture has become explicit when unions and representatives of German industry have openly defended the option of develop your own fighter or, at a minimum, two separate aircraft within the FCAS, a conceptual break with the initial idea of a common system.
At the same time, in Berlin he began to discreetly explore a way out towards the rival program led by the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan, while the new German chancellor conveyed to Paris that even abandoning the FCAS was no longer a taboo. At that point, the project stopped being a complex negotiation and became a question of how to communicate its end without assuming the political cost of acknowledging failure.
Sentenced in the offices. The last few weeks have confirmed what was privately taken for granted for months: the FCAS is practically dead and a closure announcement is more likely than any credible relaunch, despite Paris’ attempts to save time.
As we count a few weeks ago, the confrontation between Dassault and Airbus over control of the Next Generation Fighter remains without a solution, Germany is already contemplating save only the cloud combat and other shared systems, and the program that was to be the flagship of European rearmament has become the best example of its limits. For Spain, the news is especially bitter: the project that was supposed to guarantee it a seat at the high aviation technology table is fading without a clear European alternative in the short term.
The hidden winner: F-35. In this strategic vacuum, an indirect winner emerges that summarizes the worst of the paradoxes: the Lockheed Martin F-35, the plane that FCAS was to counterbecomes the default solution for many European countries. With the European program collapsedthe only new generation platform available, interoperable and in production is the American one, along with everything that its closed ecosystem implies, including the controversial technological dependence and the famous “button” symbolizing Washington’s ultimate control over the system.
Spain has been clear reject that model and defend a European fighter like guarantee of sovereigntybut the message that comes from Paris and Berlin It’s devastating: The inability to reach an agreement has left the way clear for the F-35, making the United States the great beneficiary of a European failure.
Thus, France and Germany have ended up conveying to Spain what it did not want to hear: that the project that was to emancipate Europe is dying, and the plane that symbolizes strategic dependence is the one that comes out stronger.
Image | airbus, Vitaly V. Kuzmin
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