No joint fighter jet - problems with the tank too

Anyone who values ​​their reputation in the European defense industry presents themselves at Eurosatory, the largest French arms fair held every two years. This time too, the industry is demonstrating its capabilities on a spacious exhibition area in Villepinte near Paris. More than 2.000 exhibitors meet military officials, politicians and professional visitors there.

With order books full, the mood could hardly be better. European governments want to become more militarily independent of the United States and are investing hundreds of billions of euros to that end.

But disappointment has crept into this "gold rush". The greatest European promise in armaments, that of greater strategic autonomy, failed ingloriously a few days ago: Germany and France have effectively dealt a death blow to a joint sixth-generation fighter jet. Namely, a key part of the FCAS system will no longer be built jointly.

Failure of the FCAS project as a warning signal?

Although French Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin avoided mentioning the topic in her opening speech on Monday, it appears that Paris and Berlin have not only disagreed over fighter jets, but that the main battle tank project could also run into new difficulties.

When President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel launched the FCAS in 2017 in response to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as US president, the fighter jet project was accompanied by the Franco-German Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) tank project. France was to lead the aircraft project, while Germany took the lead on the tank project. If the FCAS fails – as Macron has repeatedly stressed – the MGCS could fail too.

From consensus to competition

Last weekend, the powerful head of the German concern Rheinmetall, Armin Paperger, added fuel to the fire. He told the Sunday edition of the Welt newspaper that, according to his information, Paris is considering drastically reducing the budget for the project. The final decision has not yet been made, the German manager added.

“I take these warnings very seriously,” says Ulrike Franke of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank. “In reality, the tank project was harder and slower than the FCAS project from the very beginning.”

The German Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said Germany and France had agreed to continue developing the MGCS "platform-independently" and to focus on the core of the program. It remains an open question whether the joint main battle tank will become redundant, a ministry spokesman said on Monday.

Security expert Franke sees a number of parallels with the failed aircraft project. As with the fighter jet, the tank also has different requirements from the two countries' militaries, which complicates development. The Bundeswehr emphasizes maximum protection and firepower for NATO's eastern flank, while the French traditionally prefer lighter tanks, those that can be transported by air for rapid intervention.

The fight for technological leadership

The biggest problems, however, are caused by the defense industry – it is the one that German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius holds responsible for the failure of the FCAS. He says so publicly. “At the government level, our hands were tied. Both the German and French governments wanted to continue the project,” the minister said.

In the FCAS project, the French concern Dassault is considered a demanding, or rather difficult, partner, which politics has failed to contain. “From the very beginning, we were not all on the same wavelength,” says Cédric Perrin, chairman of the Defense Committee in the French Senate. The exhausting dispute over patents and project management eventually turned into an inexorable fight for industrial technological leadership.

A similar dilemma arises with the MGCS tank project. The dominant actor here is not Dassault, but Rheinmetall. Originally, the project was to be implemented by the Franco-German joint venture KNDS (Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Nexter).

However, under political pressure, Germany later secured the involvement of Rheinmetall, a company that aims to become Europe's largest arms manufacturer by 2030. From the French perspective, Rheinmetall's involvement significantly upset the delicate balance of the project.

The rise of Rheinmetall

Just how little the Düsseldorf-based company is willing to subordinate its own strategy to the slow political process was demonstrated four years ago at the Eurosatory trade fair. At that time, Rheinmetall surprisingly presented the Panther KF51 main battle tank in Paris – as its own alternative to the Franco-German MGCS tank.

Meanwhile, this high-tech system is being aggressively marketed and is facing a large order from Italy. From a business point of view, this independent move is rational, but it is problematic for any compromise in the Franco-German project. On Monday, KNDS also presented a battle tank for the French Army based on the Leopard 2.

The problems in the industry are not limited to these two flagship projects. The Eurodrone program, jointly developed by Germany, France, Italy and Spain, is also facing turbulence. Rising costs and delays are slowing progress. Although the design phase is complete, doubts are growing, especially in France, about the costs and military benefits. Eurodrone has not yet failed, but it serves as a cautionary tale of the difficult, complicated European cooperation in the field of defense industry.

Concerns about German dominance

While multinational European programs stagnate, the German defense industry is independently increasing its pace of business and expanding – which has not gone unnoticed on the banks of the Seine. Fear of German industrial dominance has become a central source of frustration in Paris.

Senator Cédric Perrin sums up the change in relations this way: “We have moved from a phase of different to a phase of opposing ambitions.” Germany’s view of the future of defense is now strongly national and focused on the massive expansion of its own military-industrial base, the French senator argues. Berlin also draws financial strength for these ambitions from billions of euros in a so-called special fund adopted last year.

The German-French split and its consequences for Europe are an important topic at the Paris fair. European industry may be capable of building cutting-edge weapons systems, but as long as national industrial policies dictate decisions, European defense cooperation will be inefficient and error-prone. The bill for taxpayers will not be reduced.