Germany and France have reportedly agreed to end the FCAS joint combat aircraft programme, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz and President Emmanuel Macron said to have settled the dispute over the project on 8 June in Berlin and Paris.
The decision follows months of deadlock between Airbus and Dassault Aviation over workshare, leadership and patent rights. According to the reports, the industrial disagreement had prevented progress on the sixth-generation system, which was intended to include a new fighter, unmanned escort drones and a combat cloud linking air, land and sea assets.
FCAS had been planned as a successor path for the Eurofighter and Rafale in the 2040s, and the reported termination would be a major setback for European military aviation cooperation. Some reporting indicates that collaboration on the wider system-of-systems or combat cloud elements could continue even if the fighter aircraft programme itself is abandoned.