FCAS: France and Germany’s Fight for a Future Fighter

1 May 2026 11:51 AM

Berlin may give up on FCAS’s flagship pillar but alternatives that will deliver the capability the Luftwaffe needs and fulfil industrial hopes will be difficult to find.

FCAS was always ambitious. The Franco-German-Spanish 6th generation fighter jet programme project was set around multiple pillars. Amongst these are a New Generation Fighter (NGF – a 6th generation fighter), an associated powerplant, Remote Carriers (a type of autonomous collaborative platform) and an advanced multi-domain Command and Control system dubbed Combat Cloud.

Given this scope and technological ambition, combining expertise, production capability and budgets in a multinational programme made sense. Yet, as the project is scheduled to progress to its next phase, the French and German positions on workshare expectations and capability requirements to NGF appear to diverge to a breaking point.

NGF’s stalling shows the limited political capital in Paris and Berlin to impose a political directive on its industrial landscape. But both nations must be realistic about the way forward, as options for sovereign 6th generation fighter programmes are limited. Germany’s fiscal power is confronted by limited industrial capability to develop a next generation fighter from scratch. Meanwhile, France has the sovereign capability on developing a fighter jet yet must navigate significant financial restrictions.

Should Berlin and Paris indeed break on NGF, both sides must be certain that alternatives provide net benefits over salvaging FCAS through political direction.

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