Hopes that Europe’s two future fighter programmes could move closer together appear unlikely to be realised, with Dassault Aviation’s chief executive distancing his firm from any such proposal.
Dassault is part of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) grouping alongside Airbus Defence & Space and Indra, working on behalf of France, Germany and Spain, respectively.
But elsewhere on the continent Italy and the UK – represented by Leonardo and BAE Systems – have joined forces in the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), a project also involving Japan and its industrial representative the Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Company.
Both programmes are dedicated to delivering similar sixth-generation fighters and collaborative unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) or ‘loyal wingman’ drones, as part of a system of systems, leading to repeated concerns about a duplication of effort akin to the parallel development in previous decades of the Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon.
Most recently, Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury said that the two programmes could eventually merge, or at least be designed to work more closely together, according to remarks reported by Reuters. Budgetary constraints were likely to force such an approach, he said.
However, his Dassault counterpart Eric Trappier sees no prospect for any merger.
“There are those CEOs who focus on the work and those who focus on dreams,” he told FlightGlobal on 5 March in Paris, shortly after presenting the airframer’s full-year results.
“I like to get some dreams because of course you need to look at what could happen in the next 20 or 30 years, but at the moment we like to check the facts. The facts are today that [a] merger is not in the process.”
Trappier says he sees no issue with more than one programme either. “Europe is a big continent. If you have two programmes, why not?”
For FCAS and GCAP, the first step is to produce a demonstrator of a next-generation fighter. Having that activity carried out by two programmes “means we will fuel more know-how in Europe at this stage”.
His comments to FlightGlobal reinforced remarks made during the results presentation.
“Since the beginning of the programme Airbus has come up with these statements,” he says.
“I have done what I have been asked to do. I haven’t had any discussions with Guillaume Faury or any member of the [GCAP] team.”
Trappier maintains that he has no problems working as part of a collaborative effort, pointing to the six-company consortium involved in the Dassault-led Neuron UCAV demonstrator in the 2010s.
The Neuron, he says, was a “good example of what we can do in co-operation” where “the partners were all along the same lines”.
Key to its success was the recognition by the partners that Dassault was the “architect of the programme”.
If there is no prime contractor then “the project cannot work” and “it will spend a lot of money”, producing an aircraft that does not offer the same performance “compared with what the Americans can do”.
But, he argues, beyond simply having a company leading the process “you need partners who believe in the prime, in the architect”.
Within FCAS, Dassault is in charge of developing the manned New Generation Fighter (NGF), with Airbus Defence & Space essentially a subcontractor.
Is Airbus then fully supportive of Dassault’s leadership role? “I think they believe it, but they would like to be also, because they are Airbus, the big company.”
Currently in Phase 1B, Trappier says the “next step will be to see how we contract Phase 2 of NGF with our authorities”.
First flight of the NGF demonstrator is anticipated before the end of the decade.
