Yeah, I gotta say that from an outsider’s perspective, while I’m not privvy to whatever internal concessions might have been made, from the outside, this really looks like this is mostly France’s fault, not Germany/Spain.

France was asking to commit 1/3 of the funds to build a CATOBAR plane that literally nobody else in the world other than France and possibly India wanted relative to a land-based fighter and to get to make all the major decisions on the project and, if reports are accurate, get a disproportionate amount of the workshare. I understand that Italy wanted to join, and France kept them out. France offered Germany leadership on the MGCS in exchange for France getting to run the FCAS, but the MGCS was a much smaller project than the FCAS and Spain, which was kicking in as much money as the other two partners, didn’t get anything comparable.

And it’s not just that France was asking for a lot, but that it didn’t have a lot of leverage. Germany’s got options. It can run out and build a coalition and do its own land-based fighter. It could use the F-35. It could join the GCAP program with Italy, the UK, and Japan. But France probably doesn’t have the funds to make a competitive fifth- or sixth-generation CATOBAR naval fighter on its lonesome, so it really needs some kind of coalition. And France has already committed to doing their next carrier as CATOBAR, bought that electromagnetic catapult that the US built for its carriers.

What Dassault was stating publicly for was that if France didn’t get the concessions it wanted, it would just do an update of the Rafale. That may be great for Dassault, since it gets to run everything that way. But I am far from convinced that it’s a great idea for France’s military, which, if that happens, is going to be flying a much-older fighter than comparable countries before long.

My understanding from past reading is that some of what justified this approach is that France is betting very heavily on relying on the Dassault nEUROn, possibly being remotely-controlled by a Rafale that’s hanging back, being able to fulfill tasks that a newer fighter might, and that thus they won’t need a modern, conventional fighter that badly. That’s a risky bet in my book, since we don’t have examples of wars being fought that way, and if that bet turns out to be wrong, they’re going to be in a difficult place.

My understanding from past reading is that the major limitation for Germany with GCAP is that they aren’t already involved, Japan needs the GCAP active relatively soon and can’t push back its schedule, whereas if Germany wants to start from scratch, that’ll probably push things back. But I could reasonably imagine that they do a Block 2 or something like that with whatever additions Germany wants, as Germany’s expected to be more-comfortable with a longer schedule. That being said, GCAP is expected to be a long-range, heavy fighter able to operate over the (big) Pacific, and I don’t know whether that fits what Germany’s looking for. The present article does say that Germany wants range, but I don’t know if they want that much range.

I guess we’ll see, since presumably Germany’s going to be doing its Plan B now.

EDIT: I really think that France would have been better-off doing one of the following:

• Using the F-35C on its upcoming carrier. It has only a single carrier. It doesn’t need that many planes. Then doing joint development of a European land-based fighter, which most other countries in Europe are interested in and has more export potential than a CATOBAR-capable fighter.

• Convincing enough European navies to commit to developing a European VTOL naval fighter instead of doing what they are now, using the F-35B, and then having those countries, including France, use STOVL carriers. The UK went STOVL. Italy’s presently using STOVL. I understand that Spain may-or-may-not continue to have any carriers, but I imagine that France probably could convince Spain. That requires France to give up CATOBAR on its one carrier, but my suspicion is that that’s probably liveable. That’s probably not really an option now, since it looks like France is committed to CATOBAR and a bunch of other countries are already using the F-35B on their carriers.

Now France is kinda painted into a corner. They’re going to have to make this work, and if it doesn’t work, they’re going to limit their military. And they probably have limited export potential for anything that they do make.

EDIT2: And one other thing I didn’t mention above — one of the concessions that France got was that they were worried that Germany might restrict export of the plane or parts or whatever to some country for political reasons. That might scare off customers. So they got an arrangement that FCAS export could only be blocked if all partners agree on it. Okay, fair enough — but if you’re that concerned about export potential, again, the constraint that it be a CATOBAR fighter is a significant barrier in and of itself.