Germany Signals Possible FCAS Exit, Eyes Extra F-35s as Airbus Floats Dual-Fighter Plan

Europe has been here before: in 1985 France quit the EFA programme, birthing the Rafale while the UK-German-Italian consortium built today’s Eurofighter Typhoon; the same fault-lines—nuclear doctrine, carrier ops, industrial control—now resurface. Over the past three decades the EU has sought strategic autonomy yet repeatedly falls back on U.S. kit whenever timelines slip (see Germany’s 2002 A400M delays that led to C-130 purchases). Germany’s potential doubling of its F-35 fleet deepens an asymmetric dependency on the U.S. nuclear umbrella just as Washington’s long-term commitment looks uncertain, while Airbus’s ‘two-fighter’ gambit risks splintering investment across multiple parallel projects (FCAS, GCAP, Gripen-NG), repeating the cost-inefficiencies that have dogged European airpower since the 1950s. In a 100-year lens, this moment tests whether Europe can ever consolidate defense industrial capacity or will remain a mosaic of national champions underpinned by American technology—an issue that will shape, and perhaps limit, European strategic sovereignty for decades.