The French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, said Tuesday that he wanted to “look very firmly” at the schedule of the Future Air Combat System (SCAF), a project carried out in particular by Paris and Berlin and which has been stalled for a year. .
“We must look at the calendar very firmly because it is about affirming French strategic autonomy,” said Sébastien Lecornu during questions to the government in the National Assembly.
Commissioning planned for 2040
This project, started in 2017, should enter service in 2040. But after months of bitter discussions about the division of tasks between the three countries (France, Germany and Spain), the governments signed an agreement at the end of August 2021 providing 3,600 million euros for detailed studies, to start up the construction of a flight demonstrator in 2025 that would take off two years later. Since then, the contracts have not been signed due to a lack of agreement between the French company Dassault Aviation and its main partner Airbus, which represents the interests of Germany and Spain. The SCAF now appears to be overtaken by a British-led competitor project, the Tempest.
With a Franco-German council approaching on October 26, “discussions are still ongoing” between the manufacturers, Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier said during a parliamentary hearing last week.
“Cooperation should always be win-win. There must be more advantages than disadvantages,” the Minister of the Armed Forces insisted on Tuesday. “The chancellor and the president of the republic discussed it (Monday) night in Berlin.”
In mid-September, after a meeting in Berlin with his German counterpart Christine Lambrecht, Sébastien Lecornu had found it useful to ensure that the project was not dead. “Both Berlin and Paris are expected and this project will be done, we can’t be more direct,” he said.
Source: BFM TV
