February 18, 2026 at 5:15 PM
‘SCAF is dead’: Sixth-gen Franco-German fighter is all but over, officials and analysts say
Comments from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz may represent the unofficial pulling of the plug on the effort to produce a sixth-gen fighter for France, Germany and Spain
BELFAST — Europe’s Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program has felt like it’s been on life support for months now. But comments from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz this morning may represent the unofficial pulling of the plug on the effort to produce a sixth-gen fighter for France, Germany and Spain, with one European defense minister stating flatly that the comments mean FCAS is “dead.” During an interview with German politics podcast Machtwechsel, Merz said “The French need, in the next generation of fighter jets, an aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons and operating from an aircraft carrier,” before adding “That’s not what we currently need in the German military,” strongly hinting that Berlin is soon to walkaway from the New Generation Fighter (NGF) aspect of FCAS, if not the entire deal altogether. The stance that Germany and France now share fundamentally different program requirements for the jet is a new political approach, but one that simply builds on a long-running industrial dispute between Germany’s Airbus and France’s Dassault over NGF leadership.
Citing Merz’s comments, Belgian defense minister Theo Francken — whose country has been an official observer in the program to potentially join in the future — said on X “SCAF is dead,” using the French acronym for the jet. “There will be no Franco-German sixth-generation fighter jet,” Francken wrote. “Belgium was an observer in the program.