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Europe and the UK should consider working more closely together on their rival programmes to develop the next generation of fighter jets and combat air systems, given budgetary constraints and the need to consolidate the region’s fragmented defence market, according to the head of Airbus.
Guillaume Faury, chief executive of the European aerospace and defence champion, said it made sense to establish closer ties between the UK-led Global Combat Air Programme and the Franco-German Future Combat Air System.
“There is room to do things in a smart way so each and every country can better contribute its financial and technological capacity to a bigger programme for Europe because that is what we need,” said Faury.
Both programmes envisage a next-generation fighter jet that will work seamlessly with drones and be fitted with advanced communication systems. Industry experts have long said it would make sense for the two projects to combine in some form given the pressures on governments’ defence budgets.
Speaking in London, Faury stressed that the jury was still out whether, or how, the two programmes could come closer together, especially given the difficulties in managing various partners. But he said it made sense for governments to consider what might be possible.
“The governments that are working on FCAS and GCAP need to sit down at a point in time, when they have a clear view of what is FCAS, what is GCAP, what they want to achieve . . . and see what they can do better together,” he said.
FCAS, Europe’s largest weapons programme, is a joint project by Germany, France and Spain and is led on the industry side by Airbus and France’s Dassault Aviation.
GCAP, on the other hand, is a trilateral programme between the UK, Italy and Japan. Britain’s biggest defence companies, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, are working together alongside Leonardo of Italy and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan on it.
Both projects are still at the stage of finalising the different technologies that will be included although GCAP has set an ambitious timetable to have an advanced jet flying by 2035. The three lead companies in GCAP in December struck a deal to govern the production of the aircraft.
The squeeze on national budgets has only increased following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although countries are spending more on defence, the conflict has reignited an old debate over whether European countries should develop more joint weapons programmes or continue to rely on off-the-shelf equipment from US manufacturers.
Europe is seeking to bolster co-operation ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency. Meanwhile, a new defence agreement between the UK and Germany last year is also expected to lead to closer industrial ties between the two nations.
Faury said if countries wanted to “create volume, and therefore efficiencies, spending less money on research and development . . . you need to have [them] coming together with capacities that are the same”.
Areas where synergies were possible included the development of the aircrafts’ associated drones, sensors, and the “combat cloud” infrastructure that would allow the different systems to speak with each other, according to Faury.
There were “plenty of opportunities” to bring the two programmes closer to each other “so we don’t spend all the money twice”, he added.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence said GCAP had been designed with “our Allies and partners at its very heart”.
“Future interoperability with the United States, NATO and our partners across Europe, the Indo-Pacific and globally is integral to our programme and its future success.”
The German and French defence ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Additional reporting by Laura Pitel in Berlin and Ian Johnston in Paris
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