Anyone who wants to be taken seriously in the European defense industry must attend Eurosatory, France’s largest defense trade show, held every two years. This week, the industry is once again showcasing its latest advances at the vast exhibition grounds in Villepinte, near Paris. More than 2,000 exhibitors meet military officials, politicians and industry professionals.
The mood should be upbeat as the order book is full. European governments want to reduce their defense dependence on the United States and are investing hundreds of billions of euros to pursue that goal.
However, the prevailing optimism is being tempered by disappointment. Europe’s most ambitious defense project aimed at greater strategic autonomy effectively collapsed just days ago: Germany and France dealt a fatal blow to their joint sixth-generation fighter aircraft program. The centerpiece of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) will not be built as a joint project after all.
Is the FCAS failure a turning point?
French Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin avoided the topic in her opening speech on Monday. Still, there are growing signs that Paris and Berlin are at a standoff over not only the fighter jet program, but also their joint battle tank project.
President Emmanuel Macron and former Chancellor Angela Merkel launched FCAS in 2017 in response to Brexit and the election of US President Donald Trump to the White House. The combat aircraft initiative was accompanied by a Franco-German tank program called the Main Ground Combat System (MGCS). Under the agreement, France was to lead the fighter jet project, while Germany would oversee the tank program.
Since then, President Macron has repeatedly warned that if the FCAS fails, the MGCS may ultimately suffer the same fate.
France and Germany are moving from consensus to competition
Last weekend, Armin Papperger, the head of Rhinemetall, Germany’s largest defense company, fueled the uncertainty. Peppergar said sunday world Paris is considering drastically cutting funding for the project, but said no final decision has been made.
“I take these warnings very seriously,” Ulrike Franke of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in Paris told the German broadcaster. Deutschlandfunk. He said the tank project had faced increasing difficulties from the beginning and progressed more slowly than the FCAS.
Meanwhile, the German Defense Ministry said Germany and France have agreed to continue developing the MGCS in a “platform-independent” manner and focus on the core elements of the programme. Whether this effectively renders the Joint Main Battle Tank obsolete remains an open question, a ministry spokesman said on Monday.
Franke sees many parallels with the failed aircraft project. Like the fighter jet program, differing military requirements in the two countries are complicating efforts to develop a joint tank. The German military prioritized maximum protection and firepower for NATO’s eastern flank, while France favored light tanks that could be airlifted for rapid interdiction missions.
battle for technological leadership
Yet the most striking parallels are in the defense industry itself, which German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius openly blames for the collapse of FCAS.
Pistorius said, “Our hands were tied at the government level. The German and French governments wanted to continue with the project.”
In the FCAS programme, French aerospace group Dassault Aviation is widely seen as a difficult partner, with politicians unable to get on board. “From the beginning, not everyone was on the same wavelength,” said Cédric Perrin, chairman of the defense committee in the French Senate.
A long dispute over intellectual property rights and project leadership eventually became a battle for future technological dominance in the defense sector.
A similar dilemma has arisen in the MGCS tank project. Here, the key player is not Dassault but Rhinemetal, Europe’s leading ammunition manufacturer.
The project was originally to be led by the Franco-German joint venture KNDS, combining Germany’s Cross-Maffei Wegmann and France’s Nexter.
However, Germany later pushed ahead with Rhinemetall’s involvement with strong political support. The company aims to become Europe’s largest defense manufacturer by 2030. From the French perspective, Rhinemetall’s involvement significantly changed the delicate balance of power of the project.
Rise of Rhinemetal
Rhinemetall had already signaled its impatience with the slow political process at the Eurosatory defense fair four years ago, when it unexpectedly unveiled the Panther KF51 in Paris as an alternative to the joint MGCS tank project.
The advanced system is now being marketed aggressively and is said to be close to securing a major order from Italy. This step is logical from a business point of view. But it reduces the pressure for compromise within the Franco-German joint project. On Monday, KNDS also unveiled a tank for the French Army based on the Leopard 2 platform.
The industry’s problems extend beyond the two major projects. The Eurodrone program being jointly developed by Germany, France, Italy and Spain has also run into trouble.
Rising costs and delays have slowed progress. While the design phase has been completed, there is growing skepticism about the cost and military value of the program, especially in France. The Eurodrone project has not failed, but it nevertheless serves as a cautionary example of the challenges facing Europe’s efforts at defense cooperation.
fear of german dominance
The fact that multinational defense programs are stagnating while Germany’s defense industry is taking off has not gone unnoticed in Paris. Concerns about growing German industrial dominance became a central source of frustration in the Seine.
French senator Cédric Perrin summarized the growing rift between the two neighbours: “We have moved from separate ambitions to competitive ambitions.”
Perrin argued that Germany’s vision for the future of the defense sector is increasingly focused on its national interests, with the aim of dramatically expanding its domestic defence-industrial base. Berlin is deriving most of the financial firepower for those ambitions from billions of euros provided through its special defense fund.
The growing Franco-German rift and its effects on Europe are a major topic at this week’s defense exhibition in Paris. Europe’s industry may be capable of producing world-class weapons systems. But as long as national industrial interests drive decision-making, European defense cooperation is likely to remain inefficient and vulnerable to failures.
And ultimately, it will do nothing to reduce the burden on taxpayers.
This article was originally written in German.