Germany and France drop joint fighter project

BERLIN - The leaders of France and Germany have agreed to scrap a landmark project to develop and build a new-generation fighter jet, two German officials said on Monday.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the troubled project on the sidelines of the EU-Western Balkans summit in Montenegro last week and concluded there was no prospect of breaking months of deadlock, the officials said.

Failure to reach an agreement on the €100-billion ($116 billion) project underscores the struggles Europe has faced in rebuilding its military capacity after decades of underinvestment.

The project, which centres on a core fighter jet supported by drones and linked by a classified "combat cloud", had been in doubt for months as the two sides have wrangled over specifications and control.

A European source briefed on the matter said the two sides were moving towards a face-saving solution in which the remaining systems outside the core fighter, such as the "combat cloud" of highly secure links, would maintain the same name: Future Combat Air System or FCAS.

With French elections looming next year, the formula is designed to address the reluctance of Macron to sacrifice the landmark FCAS project, which he launched with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2017, the source said.

Macron's office did not immediately return a request for comment.

The two leaders had tried for months to salvage the project and overcome differences between the main industry partners, European aerospace group Airbus, which represents Germany and Spain, and France's Dassault Aviation.

As well as disputes over control and technological specifications, the two sides had widely differing requirements for the aircraft.

Merz has openly questioned whether developing a manned sixth-generation fighter jet still made sense for his country's air force, and said Germany did not need a nuclear-capable jet that could land on an aircraft carrier.

(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher and Michel Rose, writing by Ludwig Burger and James Mackenzie, editing by Thomas Seythal and Andrew Heavens)

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