France\u00a0will keep working on a next-generation fighter jet through 2040, the defence minister said on Wednesday, after Germany pulled the plug on the joint FCAS programme this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cEight years of commitment, 2.5 billion in investment,\u201d Defence Minister Catherine Vautrin told parliament, referring to the joint German-French jet project.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means that almost all of this investment will enable us to continue working on a fighter jet through 2040,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is obviously a major technical asset for our country\u2019s sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Future Combat Air System (FCAS) programme was launched in 2017 to replace France\u2019s Rafale jets and the Eurofighter planes used by Germany and Spain.<\/p>\n
On Monday, France and Germany said they had agreed to abandon the joint fighter jet programme due to disagreements between the companies involved, in a blow to European efforts to boost defence cooperation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe German authorities considered that it was not possible to put any further pressure on the companies concerned,\u201d an Elysee official said.<\/p>\n
The multi-billion-dollar programme was beset by disagreements between the firms involved \u2014 France\u2019s Dassault Aviation and Airbus, which represents Germany and Spain.<\/p>\n
The head of Dassault Aviation, Eric Trappier, has insisted his firm can build the future European fighter jet by itself.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Wednesday, Vautrin praised \u201cthe commitment of the French industrial team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to mention Dassault, Safran, Thales and the entire ecosystem,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is the only team in Europe capable of producing a fighter jet entirely independently.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Berlin on Thursday, a group of companies led by Airbus is set to present their plan for a next-generation fighter jet, hoping to replace the Franco-German FCAS project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France\u00a0will keep working on a next-generation fighter jet through 2040, the defence minister said on Wednesday, after Germany…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,522,197535],"class_list":["post-1018663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-international","tag-mna"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116728730022323354","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}