{"id":6257,"date":"2019-10-07T20:04:05","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T01:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=6257"},"modified":"2019-10-07T20:04:05","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T01:04:05","slug":"arms-firms-fret-delays-in-franco-german-fighter-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=6257","title":{"rendered":"Arms Firms Fret Delays in Franco-German Fighter Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

PARIS, Oct 7 (Reuters) – France’s Dassault Aviation and Europe’s Airbus have stepped up pressure on France and Germany to agree on the next stage of a planned fighter project, warning Europe’s arms industry and long-term security could suffer from delays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two companies are the leading industrial partners in a project to build a futuristic swarm of manned and unmanned warplanes, announced by the leaders of France and Germany two years ago and expanded earlier this year to include Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dassault and Airbus won a 65-million-euro contract in January to develop the concept for the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) but await a new contract to build demonstrators for interlinked fighters, drones and an \u201cair combat cloud\u201d by 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dassault Aviation Chief Executive Eric Trappier told a conference of policymakers last month that the demonstrator contract should have been launched in September but this was now slipping towards end-year. He called it “indispensable” to avoid any further delays in order to maintain the 2026 deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No reason has been given for the delays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday evening, Dassault and Airbus amplified those warnings with a joint statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If Europe does not move forward \u2014 and move forward quickly \u2014 on this programme, it will be impossible to maintain the development and production capabilities needed for a sovereign defence industry,” the companies said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The warplane system is expected to be operational from 2040, with a view to replacing Dassault\u2019s Rafale and the four-nation Eurofighter, in which Airbus represents both Germany and Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new project faces competition from Britain and its plans for a new combat jet dubbed \u201cTempest\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fighter developments have split the current Eurofighter consortium and led to a shake-up of industrial alliances as Italy joins Eurofighter partner Britain on Tempest, turning its back on Germany and Spain, while Sweden has opened the door to abandoning its independent stance by co-operating on Tempest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FCAS is also overshadowed by differences between France and Germany over export policy after Germany imposed a ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia over the death of killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi a year ago by Saudi operatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ban, recently extended to March, has raised questions over a long-delayed Saudi border systems contract run by Airbus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Airbus Defence and Space Chief Executive Dirk Hoke called in a magazine interview last week for the export ban to be relaxed. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has said there is no reason for the moratorium to be lifted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

France and Germany are expected to discuss the issue at ministerial meetings this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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AIRBUS SETBACK IN SPAIN<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Airbus meanwhile faces a battle to shore up its position as a top defence contractor in Spain after losing its place as the representative of Spain’s interests on the upcoming fighter project to local defence electronics firm Indra Sistemas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spain last month named Indra as contractor for the Spanish share of the Franco-German-led FCAS project, displacing Airbus from the Spanish coordinator role it had held on Eurofighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Airbus officials have pledged to try to overturn the move but a Spanish defence source told Reuters there was no change in the decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indra declined to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publicly, Airbus has said it was surprised by the decision but has pledged to continue to defend Spain’s best interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dassault will meanwhile mark a long-awaited milestone on Tuesday when it delivers the first of 36 Rafales to India, the culmination of a fighter procurement process that lasted almost 20 years and involved the cancellation of a much larger deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

La Tribune reported on Monday that France and India were discussing a possible repeat order for 36 more Rafales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Additional reporting by Emma Pinedo Gonzalez in Madrid, Tassilo Hummel in Berlin, Editing by Deepa Babington)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

France’s Dassault Aviation and Europe’s Airbus have stepped up pressure on France and Germany to agree on the next stage of a planned fighter project, warning Europe’s arms industry and long-term security could suffer from delays. The two companies are <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4510,798,4813,89,5804,5637,1836,5174,5992,5670,2303,6875,2203,4957,5676,5446,1397],"tags":[5719,539,47,420,7273,2860,3930,160,4832,2432,7272,3308,1183,2830,2494,954,430,1185,7270,1268,741,4681,7268,1669,5112,1510,1767,7269,1184,6634,1269,3244,207,3261,7260,3301,888,805,7276,1662,1681,1931,4836,589,4834,4835,7271,6438,7264,7274,412,1181,7263,100,1090,4437,3234,1509,1288,2397,7275,1932,7262,7261,1505,1177,1149,7267,1691,1658,1271,7265,7266],"class_list":["post-6257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aerospace-news","category-airbus-news","category-airplane-news","category-aviation-news","category-avionics","category-business-news","category-defense-news","category-drone-news","category-economic-news","category-economy-news","category-electric-vehicle-news","category-embraer-news","category-finance-news","category-global-politics","category-international-news","category-military-news","category-stock-news","tag-agree","tag-air","tag-airbus","tag-airline","tag-angela","tag-arabia","tag-arms","tag-aviation","tag-border","tag-britain","tag-chancellor","tag-cloud","tag-combat","tag-companies","tag-competition","tag-concept","tag-contract","tag-dassault","tag-death","tag-defense","tag-delay","tag-develop","tag-developments","tag-drones","tag-electronics","tag-eurofighter","tag-europe","tag-exports","tag-fighter","tag-fighters","tag-firm","tag-firms","tag-france","tag-franco","tag-fret","tag-future","tag-german","tag-india","tag-indra","tag-industrial","tag-industry","tag-italy","tag-jamal","tag-jet","tag-journalist","tag-khashoggi","tag-killing","tag-leading","tag-manned","tag-merkel","tag-news","tag-next","tag-over","tag-paris","tag-partners","tag-pressure","tag-project","tag-rafale","tag-reuters","tag-saudi","tag-sistemas","tag-spain","tag-stage","tag-step-up","tag-sweden","tag-system","tag-systems","tag-tempest","tag-transport","tag-transportation","tag-unmanned","tag-warplanes","tag-won"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6261,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6257\/revisions\/6261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}