Berlin & Paris Scrap €100 B Future Combat Air System (FCAS) Fighter Program

Europe has been here before: the 1967 collapse of the Anglo-French AFVG fighter and the tortuous 1983–94 gestation of the four-nation Eurofighter both showed that when strategic requirements and industrial leadership clash, politics cannot glue the project together. FCAS’s demise re-highlights two long-term vectors: 1) the persistent fragmentation of Europe’s defence market—28 fighter types since 1945 compared with the U.S.’s half-dozen—and 2) France’s need to preserve an independent nuclear-capable, carrier-borne aviation arm versus Germany’s post-1949 aversion to such roles. In a 100-year lens this moment is less about one aircraft and more about whether Europe can ever pool sovereignty in hard-power industries; failure pushes capitals toward either deeper U.S. dependence (e.g., F-35 buys) or new mini-coalitions such as the UK-Italy-Japan GCAP. The scrapping of a sixth-generation European flagship signals that, despite rhetoric of “strategic autonomy,” national industrial interests still trump integration—echoing the aborted European Defence Community of 1954—and may delay a truly indigenous continental combat aircraft well into the 2040s.