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The head of Airbus’s defence arm has said he remains open to a two-fighter jet solution for Europe’s faltering next-generation air defence project, noting that it was conceived before the war in Ukraine when military budgets were tighter.
Mike Schoellhorn, head of Airbus Defence and Space, said that while the “basic idea” of a “networked system” linking the fighter jets and the sensors and drone elements of the project was still very relevant in today’s defence environment, Ukraine had changed the calculus on the core warplane element.
When the Future Combat Air Programme was launched by France and Germany in 2017, countries were more willing to compromise on the technical requirements for the jet, said Schoellhorn.
“Yet, even then, it was not a secret that it would be quite a bit of a compromise to fit carrier capability, nuclear capability [required by France] with an air dominance system that Germany and Spain needed,” Schoellhorn told reporters at an Airbus defence event near Munich in Germany.
From an engineering perspective, that was always seen as “very difficult”, he added.
Schoellhorn’s comments come as France and Germany remain locked in discussions to salvage the ambitious €100bn project which has been plagued by power struggles between Airbus’s German-based defence unit and France’s Dassault Aviation over work share and leadership on the jet.
The jet is at the heart of the project, which also includes Spain’s Indra Sistemas, and is seen as one of Europe’s most important defence initiatives which aims to replace the Eurofighter and Rafale aircraft currently in service from 2040 onwards. It includes other elements, including advanced engines, drones, advanced sensors and communications, all connected by a networked system known as the combat cloud.
Schoellhorn’s comments echo those of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz earlier this year. Merz in February questioned whether the planned jet would meet the requirements of Germany’s military.
Schoellhorn on Wednesday said he was “supportive of finding a solution” to the current impasse between the two sides.
If the solution is not to stick with a “one fighter solution, then I support a two-fighter solution”, he added, while stressing that it was in the hands of the governments to decide the best way forward.
Guillaume Faury, Airbus’s chief executive, told reporters at the same event that the project was launched “in peacetime” and based on “a number of assumptions which are no longer valid today”.
Today, he said, the world was in a scenario of “potential conflict, real conflict or war, the specifications become more important”.
“There are different ways forward and I would leave it to governments to reflect and decide what they want to do,” he added.
