The joint programme by France, Germany and Spain to develop and build a new sixth-generation fighter finally collapsed in the run-up to the 2026 ILA Berlin Air Show. Many had been expecting and predicting the programme’s demise for more than a year.
On 8 June 2026 Boris Pistorius, German Federal Minister of Defence since 2023, told a press conference in Berlin that the Franco-German-Spanish programme to develop a sixth-generation fighter (known as the Next Generation Fighter, or NGF) had collapsed and that Germany was holding talks with new partners aimed at developing a next-generation fighter. “After nine years, the joint project between Germany, France and Spain for a shared fighter jet has been terminated,” Pistorius said.
The announcement came one day after Der Spiegel, AFP and Reuters reported that France and Germany had decided to abandon the construction of a common combat aircraft and that cancellation would be formally announced at the ILA Berlin Air Show. It remains unclear as to exactly what has been cancelled: whether the entire system of systems has been abandoned, or just the fighter that sits at its heart.
It has been suggested that work on some of the programme’s ‘pillars’, including engines, remote carriers and digital connectivity (the combat cloud), could potentially be progressed further despite the programme’s ending. Early reports indicated that joint work would continue on the programme’s related Unmanned and Combat Cloud pillars.
It is perhaps telling that no-one is even able to agree what the abandoned Franco-German-Spanish sixth-generation fighter programme should be called. The overall programme name for the over-arching ‘system of systems’ is SCAF (Système de Combat Aérien du Futur) or FCAS (Future Combat Air System), or more properly NGWS (Next Generation Weapons System). The terms Zukünftiges Luftkampfsystem (literally Future Air Combat System) and Futuro Sistema Aéreo de Combate (FSAC) are also used in Germany and Spain respectively.
The core manned fighter at the heart of the system is the Next Generation Fighter (NGF), and it is perhaps no surprise that Dassault and Airbus continued to use quite different CGIs and models when depicting what that aircraft would look like. Major General Jean-Luc Moritz, who leads the French Ministry of Defence (MoD) segment of the programme, said in November 2023 that he expected two designs to be chosen by mid-2024, with the choice of a single final configuration anticipated by March 2025. No such decision was ever made.
Behind the scenes there were acrimonious disputes about design leadership responsibilities, technology transfer arrangements, intellectual property ownership rights, industrial workshare and technical specifications.
The SCAF/FCAS programme was launched industrially by a Franco-German (Dassault/Airbus-led) consortium in 2018, with Spain joining in 2019. Phase 1A, which supported early research and conceptual studies, was intended to develop the system architecture and explore key technology areas (including the design of the manned fighter and unmanned platforms as well as the combat cloud). The initial EUR 65 million, 18-month initial framework (Phase 1A) contract was eventually signed on 12 February 2020, having been delayed by a German requirement for approval by the Budget Committee of the Bundestag.
Specific roles and responsibilities were assigned to the French and German partner companies under Phase 1A, with Spanish workshare being left for the Phase 1B contract, which was signed on 17 May 2021.
Phase 1B covered the design of the NGF and Remote Carrier airframes and systems (as well as demonstrators for both), together with a simulation environment and integration, test and initial production strategies.
Phase 1B was expected to take about three-and-a-half years to complete.
An NGF demonstrator was originally expected to be ready to fly by the summer of 2026 as part of Phase 1B, but this was subsequently moved to Phase 2 and a first flight was tentatively scheduled for 2029.
Phase 2 had been expected by the end of August 2025, and then by the end of that year. On 2 January 2026 a German chancellery spokesman confirmed that there had been a further postponement of the final decision on the FCAS programme’s Phase 2 and it remained unsigned when the project collapsed.
Pressure to abandon the programme has built up progressively.
In September 2025 German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez were still trying to save the programme and expressed their wish for the programme to “move forward with urgency”.
In December 2025 German industrial union IG Metall (representing Airbus workers) and the General Works Council at Airbus Defence and Space warned that they would stop co-operating on the programme if Dassault remained involved. “We no longer trust Dassault,” they said. “We are happy to collaborate with French businesses but not with Dassault,” alleging that the French company had “completely disqualified itself as a reliable partner” and was “trampling over European co-operation and the Franco-German friendship for selfish reasons”.
Jean-Brice Dumont, the head of airpower at Airbus Defence and Space, stated, “We don’t challenge that there is an appointed leader for the fighter programme. That leader is named Dassault.” However, he also said that other partners deserve a fair share and asserted that the partnership “doesn’t have to become toxic”. Pistorius observed that “What’s important for the two of us is that the projects represent German-French co-operation and partnership; [that] they don’t represent national egotism.”
French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu promised to address the subject of governance with his German and Spanish counterparts and to encourage dialogue between Guillaume Faury, president of Airbus (representing Germany and Spain), and Dassault Aviation CEO Éric Trappier, whose response was to threaten to withdraw from the SCAF programme altogether and ‘go it alone’.
The NGWS was made up of seven development pillars, with the manned fighter forming Pillar 1 but also including unmanned collaborative combat aircraft (or remote carriers), engine technology, simulation, sensors and stealth, as well as a ‘combat cloud’ data network linking the wider system of systems.
Behind the cancellation of the fighter (or the entire system of systems) there is a long history of often acrimonious and fundamental disagreement. Surprisingly, a fundamental difference in requirements does not seem to have been the critical factor in the programme’s eventual failure. While France required a nuclear- and aircraft carrier-capable fighter, Germany and Spain needed neither of these capabilities but were apparently happy to accept the limitations that these capabilities imposed (constrained dimensions and weight limits for carrier use and cost/security constraints for nuclear-capable aircraft). It would be easy to overstate the differences in operational requirements, which really should have been bridgeable with a little compromise.
All three NGWS partners wanted the aircraft to be capable of operating in a traditional fighter role, projecting air dominance and surviving in heavily contested future threat environments and acting as a ‘command fighter’ that would control unmanned adjuncts and effectors as well as other combat aircraft. It was expected that artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced datalink technologies would be leveraged in order for pilots to perform battle management functions.
However, earlier this year German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pointed to a “fundamental operational divergence” and reportedly proposed a solution in which there could be two manned aircraft types within the programme. Airbus Defence & Space chief executive Mike Schoellhorn recently proposed the same scheme as a means of breaking the deadlock. A system of systems with “two high-performance next-generation aircraft” had previously been called for by German labour bosses as part of what they called a “smart repositioning of FCAS”. The German Aerospace Industries Association (BDLI) has also advocated for this.
There seemed to be ways of overcoming the difficulties of ‘operational divergence’, but not to overcome programmatic management/leadership problems.
For two of the partners, Germany and Spain, the idea was to work together co-operatively with allies to jointly fund, develop and build a new sixth-generation fighter and the adjuncts, effectors and enabling technologies that would be required.
The French government may (or may not) have been signed up to the same vision, but its industrial prime, tasked with leading the manned fighter pillar, saw the programme very differently.
For Dassault Aviation the company’s status and long history of independent sovereign fighter design heritage made it the ‘best athlete’ and natural ‘head’ of the programme; it always wanted to lead, rather than being an equal partner in a Eurofighter GmbH-style joint venture.
Dassault’s expectation that it should have ‘design leadership’ in collaborative programmes had previously de-railed the company’s planned participation in the multi-national Eurofighter (then the Future European Fighter Aircraft) programme and has since mitigated against participation in further potential collaborative manned fighter programmes.
When reports emerged that Dassault was seeking an 80% workshare on the NGF there were fears in Germany that it would have to give up too much sovereignty and independence and would end up effectively using German money to finance what would be, to all intents and purposes, a French project.
Meanwhile, Trappier bristled at the idea of equal voting by the three partners. He complained that the SCAF/NGF programme lacked “one true leader” but instead had “three ‘co-co-co’s”.
“How can I have leadership when I have someone in front of me who weighs twice as much? We are not capable of distributing the work according to what we think. We have to compromise, negotiate constantly,” Trappier complained.
One industry insider observed that SCAF was “the least harmonious collaborative combat air programme in history. We have three national partners bickering over who gets to do what, and two of those partners have taken arguing to the level of being an Olympic sport.” Another noted that “Dassault’s definition of a collaborative partnership is one in which Dassault decides the direction and gets the workshare and intellectual property, while its partners sit back and pay the bills, gratefully accepting any crumbs that fall from the table.”
It was this ‘industrial’ disagreement that did for a programme that still enjoyed the support of the three governments concerned.
Pistorius cited irreconcilable differences between Airbus and Dassault (and ‘diverging military requirements’) for the programme’s collapse, noting that government leaders from both France and Germany had been unable to force the companies to co-operate or agree in areas including collaborative decision making, intellectual property and workshare. “The cancellation of the planned fighter jet is primarily due to differing positions among the industries. Germany and France attempted to mediate in the dispute between the two companies – ultimately without success,” he said.
Pistorius described the programme as “an ambitious, grand European project that has now been shattered by reality. We have to live with that. … It’s no surprise that FCAS has now been terminated. Signs had been pointing in that direction for quite some time. … Knowing what we know today, we wouldn’t set up a programme in this way again,” he said.
In Belgium an observer on the NGWS programme since 2023, Defence Minister Theo Francken, remarked, “SCAF is crap. The water between Dassault and Airbus is too deep. … It’s a painful wake-up call.”
Pistorius made it clear, however, that Germany still needed a new manned combat air platform. “The Ministry of Defence remains committed to equipping the air force with modern and high-performance systems in the long term. The focus now is on exploring new avenues and partnerships to realise the development of a sixth-generation fighter jet,” he stated.
Pistorius outlined a number of possible options. The first is to add more aircraft to the existing German order for 35 Lockheed Martin F-35As, in addition to the reported plans for 15 more, as reported by Der Spiegel in October 2025. However, Germany has ambitions beyond today’s fifth-generation F-35A and Pistorius described plans to acquire more as a “bridge or whatever” on the way to a next-generation aircraft for Germany.
Pistorius also raised the prospect of joining an existing international fighter programme “with sixth-generation features”.
The obvious candidate would be the Anglo-Italian-Japanese Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), but this is understood to be closed to new partners during the ongoing development phase, although participation in the production phase might be possible and there have been reports that Canada has been offered ‘observer status’ on the programme.
A third option would be for Germany to start its own programme under what Pistorius called “German leadership with Airbus and other partners.”
Pistorius confirmed that he and other defence leaders had been talking to Airbus about possible options “for months”, noting that the end of the FCAS programme had been anticipated.
Pistorius also mentioned a fourth option that he did not yet want to talk about. This could be a possible collaboration with Sweden and Saab.
No decision has been taken, with Pistorius saying, “As for the new jet, we’ll see which path we take. We have been in discussions with various stakeholders about this for months – as you can well imagine. However, I am not going to speculate publicly here about which project it might turn out to be or who would lead it.”
Where this leaves France is uncertain. There were already reports that Dassault Aviation could abandon SCAF to concentrate on the Rafale F5 (and later versions).
The Rafale F5 may be felt to be an affordable and achievable solution that will beat the threat well into the 2040s and which might be a more profitable near-term source of export earnings. The NGF may be too large and too costly for many potential customers, while programme timescales could result in the aircraft arriving on the market long after its main competitors.
In a piece written for the Royal Aeronautical Society magazine Aerospace, aerospace analyst Bill Sweetman postulated that Dassault might struggle to execute the NGF (and its associated demonstrator), given the need to resource Rafale F4 fielding and F5 development, as well as a new unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) and the Falcon 10X business jet.
At the 2025 Paris Air Show Dassault’s NGF full-scale model was moved from its usual prominent position in the Dassault coral, its place being taken by a static display of the Rafale F5 and the new UCAV, while the company’s stand in the exhibition halls saw the single small NGF model relegated to the third row of an array of company products behind 14 Rafales and an array of Falcon business jets. Even Dassault company graphics seemed to de-emphasise or demote the NGF, while highlighting the Rafale, Falcon 10X and the new UCAV.
