For several years, France, Germany and Spain have been developing what they bill as a European sixth-generation fighter aircraft. The Future Combat Air System, or FCAS, was launched in 2018 as a joint Franco-German initiative, with Spain joining a year later. More than just a simple fighter jet, the FCAS also includes a “combat cloud” component linking the aircraft with other systems in the air, on the water and on the ground, as well as a swarm of potentially armed drones dubbed “remote carriers.”
The system was planned to enter service in 2040, but that timeline has now been pushed back to 2045. The delay is largely the result of the numerous conflicts, most of them between Berlin and Paris, that have plagued the FCAS development program almost since its inception.
The list of issues is so long that naming them all would require a whole other column. For example, France needs an aircraft able to start and land on its carriers as well as to carry nuclear weapons, while Germany is looking for a heavier fighter able to fly further. There are also disagreements over future exports of the system: Germany is generally reticent to send weapons beyond its NATO partners, while France uses arms exports to develop relationships with a broad range of partners.