Dassault is continuing a future fighter after FCAS
The joint fighter has collapsed, but France’s attempt to develop a Rafale successor has not. The next question is who joins a Dassault-led programme.
Dassault Aviation says it will continue work on a future combat aircraft after France and Germany abandoned the fighter at the centre of the Future Combat Air System programme.
Speaking to the French Senate’s foreign affairs and defence committee on 1 July, Dassault CEO Éric Trappier said the company remained open to cooperation, including potentially with a non-European partner. His condition was that the partners accept the programme’s rules from the outset.
That shifts the immediate monitor question. The issue is no longer whether Dassault and Airbus can agree on leadership of the New Generation Fighter. It is whether France funds a Dassault-led demonstrator, which countries or companies join it, and what happens to the other FCAS elements—notably the shared combat cloud—that Germany and France may still pursue separately.
For now, this is an industrial commitment rather than a defined aircraft programme. No new government budget, partner, production schedule, or final set of requirements was announced in the sources reviewed.