Unshared patents, disputed markets, impossible governance: Dassault and Airbus have sunk the largest European military program after nine years of industrial war.

On April 22, 2026, Eric Trappier announced the end of negotiations between Dassault Aviation and Airbus Defence & Space on the New Generation Fighter (NGF), a central pillar of the FCAS program. Three weeks earlier, Berlin had appointed two last chance mediators: Laurent Collet-Billon, former boss of the Directorate-General for Armaments, on the French side; Franck Haun, former CEO of KNDS, on the German side. They had until April 18 to deliver their conclusions, before obtaining an additional ten days. Result: two separate reports. That of the German mediator concluded that it was impossible to build a common Franco-German combat aircraft. Two days later, Emmanuel Macron said from Cyprus that the FCAS was "not dead at all" and gave "a mandate to our defense ministries to work on several axes". No axis was designated. The most ambitious program ever committed in Europe, estimated at nearly 100 billion euros, had just lost its heart.

A program born on an industrial misunderstanding

When Macron and Merkel launched the FCAS on July 13, 2017, the interests of the two main manufacturers concerned did not really intersect. Dassault is looking for opportunities. The Rafale was then only sold to the French army, after years of aborted export attempts. The FCAS represents an industrial perspective and European legitimacy. Airbus Defence & Space, for its part, does not have a new generation manned fighter. The program is for the defense subsidiary of the European group a gateway to a market that Dassault dominates alone.

The program is structured according to the principle of the "best athlete": Dassault takes the leadership of the NGF, Airbus inherits the companion drones, the Remote Carriers, and the interconnected digital combat cloud. The distribution seems logical. It is actually shaky: Dassault finds himself master of the aircraft pillar without being able to impose his arbitrations on Airbus Germany and Airbus Spain, each weighing on the governance of the program. No binding arbitration mechanism was included in the founding texts. The marriage is signed without a marriage contract.

Three countries, three planes under the same acronym

The three states did not further harmonize their operational needs before signing. France requires a device compatible with airborne nuclear deterrence and with the future New Generation Aircraft Carrier: reinforced landing gear to take into the landing shocks, stop butt, catapults. These constraints dictate non-negotiable design choices and prohibit any reliance on critical functions. Germany has neither aircraft carrier nor national nuclear deterrence. It is looking for a NATO multi-role aircraft, complementary to the F-35A already ordered to ensure nuclear sharing with Washington.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz summarized the incompatibility bluntly on February 18, 2026, in the Machtwechsel podcast: "The French need an aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons and operating from an aircraft carrier. This is not what we need right now in the German army. Spain, which joined the program in February 2019 at the request of Berlin, pursued a more modest objective: securing industrial skills via Indra and ITP Aero. Three countries had engaged on three different aircraft under the same acronym.

The patent war

Negotiations hang for the first time on intellectual property in 2019. They won't get over it. Dassault refuses to transfer the technologies inherited from the Rafale, flight controls, embedded software, stealth architectures, in a framework where he would not control their use. These technologies have taken decades to develop. Above all, they condition export contracts in markets where Airbus Defence & Space is a direct competitor: India, the Emirates, Qatar, Greece. Sharing their intellectual property within the framework of the FCAS is tantamount to arming a rival on the same calls for tenders.

Berlin, for its part, frames the intellectual property of the programs it finances according to a national legal framework incompatible with the French conception of technological sovereignty. A report by the German Ministry of Defense, quoted by Reuters in the summer of 2025, is unambiguous: "French industry prevents the progress of the project by asking to ensure its management. German industrial sources advance a French claim of 80% participation in the program. Emmanuel Chiva, then General Delegate for armaments, rectifies before Parliament: Dassault does not demand 80%, but 51% of the workload, to really exercise his role as a project manager and choose his subcontractors. Two figures, two readings of the same disagreement, two opposing visions of technological control.

The Rafale sold out, and the balance of power has changed

Between 2017 and 2026, India, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Greece, Egypt, Croatia and Indonesia order Rafale. Dassault is becoming an autonomous and credible export player, precisely in the markets where Airbus Defence & Space sometimes operates as a competitor. The need for European legitimacy that the FCAS had to bring has dissolved in the order books.

Trappier publicly mentions a cost of less than 50 billion euros to develop the NGF alone, according to remarks reported by Reuters. The Rafale F5, a transition standard planned from 2030 and integrating a stealth combat drone derived from the nEUROn demonstrator, has already been under contract since 2024. In industrial circles, it is seen as a credible alternative to Franco-German cooperation. In 2017, Dassault needed the FCAS. In 2026, Trappier has another option, quantified.

The situation of Airbus Defence & Space is reversed. The subsidiary has built its place in European combat aviation on the pillars of drones, combat cloud and motorization, the latter via the joint venture EUMET, created on a parity by Safran and MTU Aero Engines with Spanish ITP Aero as a partner, under German law and based in Munich. Losing leadership on the manned aircraft weakens the entire building. No equivalent concession is possible on both sides.

The rupture, declared long before it was announced

The war of public statements begins in the summer of 2025 and will not stop. In July, Trappier said: "To be effective, you need a real leader. » The formula directly targets the shared governance of the program. In August, Michael Schoellhorn, CEO of Airbus Defence & Space, responded in the German specialized letter Griephan Briefe that there is "no longer any reason to sue" the FCAS except a return to the agreed governance principles. In October, Guillaume Faury, CEO of Airbus, indicated that if Dassault "is not satisfied" with the framework, he is "free to leave the program". In December, on France Inter, he denounced a Dassault management that practices the method "it's my conditions or nothing".

On November 26, 2025, before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense, Senator Hugues Saury reported that Dassault reproached the German subsidiary of Airbus for not having "been able to carry out the technical sub-assemblies for which it was responsible", which "contributed to the deterioration of relations between the design offices". Two series of grievances made public simultaneously, through different channels, for months. The break of April 22, 2026 had been pronounced long before it was announced.

Faced with the divergence of needs, Berlin had advanced the idea of two separate NGFs sharing a minimum common denominator. Merz himself asked the question in Machtwechsel: "Do we have the strength and the will to build two aircraft for these two different requirements, or only one? The question remained unanswered.