ILA Berlin Air Show 2018

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (in purple) and French politician Delphine Geny-Stephann look on as (from L to R, seated) Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier, Chair of the DLR Executive Board Pascale Ehrenfreud and DLR Executive Board member Rolf Henke sign a contract of intent to build a joint fighter aircraft at the ILA Berlin Air Show on April 25, 2018 in Schoenefeld, Germany.(Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

PARIS — After two false alarms in as many weeks, Dassault Aviation and Airbus have finally reached an industrial agreement for the study phase of the Future Combat Aircraft System (SCAF), removing the blockage that brought the program to a standstill in summer 2021.

The announcement was revealed by Le Figaro, a conservative daily newspaper owned by the Dassault Group, on Dec. 1. Eric Trappier, CEO of Dassault Aviation, called the agreement “a win-win situation for all parties involved.” That same day, French Minister for the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu tweeted that “this project is a concrete illustration of the cooperation we are conducting at European level on defense and armaments, in which France plays a central role.”

According to Trappier “all the blockages have been lifted. We can now start execution of the new phase of studies, known as 1B that will prepare the development of a demonstrator which should fly by around 2029. All that is left to do is the formal signature of the contracts in the next few days.” The timing for the formal signing has yet to be announced by the DGA French procurement agency, the executive agency for the contracts acting in the name of the three partner nations of France, Germany and Spain.

According to Trappier, the agreement sets up Dassault as the prime contractor for the aircraft, settling the major issue that had hung over the fighter jet for over a year. He added that the agreement cleared the path to the signature of a study contract which would lay the groundwork for construction of a demonstrator, which should be ready for test flights by 2029.

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Phase 1B has a budget of €3.6 billion ($3.8 billion) shared between manufacturers in the three partner countries. Another contract will need to be negotiated in two or three years to launch phase 2, which covers building the prototype.

Mike Schoellhorn, CEO of Airbus, said in a statement that “all the industrial partners of FCAS have now signed their respective agreements […]This overall industrial agreement represents a big step forward for this European defense flagship program.” He added “this is paving the way to a final contract signature between nations and industry partners, once relevant processes have been concluded in the respective customer nations. We are optimistic that this can be accomplished in the very near future.”

Trappier concedes that “there was a lot of pressure all around. We applied pressure. We were pressured. But as long as the industrial agreement had not been finalized it was premature to announce it. Today it’s done, so we can go public.”

Trappier added that even if Dassault had had to make concessions “we obtained all the guarantees  in, what I would like to stress, is an upstream study phase and not yet a program.” The crucial element in the discussions was that Dassault wanted to retain and protect its industrial know-how and technologies. Apparently it was successful in achieving this: “It entailed putting into place an industrial organization with a leader and partners. The property of the work to be undertaken will be shared, but the technologies and know-how that belong to us will not be,” Trappier told Le Figaro.

He explained that a Franco-German-Hispanic team would work together on a digital platform at Dassault Aviation headquarters in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Cloud, equipped with Dassault Systèmes computer aided design tools and a 100% European cloud “in order to ensure the partners have a fluid and secure access to data and information.”

Groupe Vauban, an economic intelligence bureau employing some 20 defense experts, stated in an analysis on the La Tribune website that this agreement is clearly a “French victory, a German capitulation.”

It says that “confronted with the resistance of the aircraft manufacturer [Dassault], the French state finally took seriously the role that the Franco-German agreement of 13 July 2017 had assigned it, that is the full and complete role of prime contractor of the program.” Vauban adds that “this role is anything but trivial as [Lecornu] wrote in a letter dated 26 November to a few parliamentarians and since made public: ‘we are keeping a constant eye on making sure that this program is compatible with our strategic interests, including our technological and industrial sovereignty, obviously tied to our strategic air forces and nuclear naval aviation.’”

As everything seems to be with the tri-national program, the run up to the announcement was unnecessarily complicated. First the German Defense Ministry unilaterally announced on Nov. 18 that “following intense negotiations, an agreement has been reached by industry.” That sent Paris scrambling, putting out a statement later that evening that while a “political” agreement had been reached between the two nations, the industrial agreement had not been concluded. Airbus and Spanish contractor Indra, meanwhile, both published an identical statement confirming the agreement, which was met with utter silence from Dassault.

Then on Nov. 25, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced during a joint press conference with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin that an agreement between the two industrial groups had been reached. This announcement was almost immediately denied by Dassault, which proceeded to go silent — until publications of the Le Figaro interview, in which Trappier announced, without comment from the other companies, that agreement had been reached.

Originally planned to replace the French Rafale and German and Spanish Eurofighters by 2040, over the summer Trappier states that “with the delays it’s already too late for 2040. We’re more likely headed for the 2050s.” The program, now known by its French acronym SCAF to differentiate it from the British-Italian FCAS program, will operate in a network with remotely piloted air systems, known in this program as unmanned remote carriers/Loyal Wingman, with Airbus as the prime for the unmanned portion. Spain’s Indra is the lead contractor responsible for the sensors, alongside Thales and Germany’s FCMS.

The aircraft segment of the SCAF is only a part of the system. Airbus is prime contractor for the unmanned segment, or the remote carrier vehicles as they are referred to by the partners, with European missile manufacturer MBDA as the main partner. Airbus will also be the prime for developing the combat cloud with Thales as its main partner.

French aircraft manufacturer Safran is the lead for engine development with Germany’s MTU Aero Engines and Spain’s ITP Aero as partners.