NEWS ONLY: France-Germany-Spain Future Combat Air System (FCAS / SCAF / FSAC)

insidersource said:
You are 100% wrong.

Turkey KAAN
Korea KF-21
India AMCA
Sweden Flygsystem 2020
Russia Su-57
Russia Su-75

These are all 5th gen fighters under development. France would not be the "behind'. France could actually be the first country to make an aircraft that beats the F-35 in all areas. France already has excellent avionics and engine technology in the Rafale. All of the other countries on the above list either lack indigenous engines, avionics or both.

I would also avoid using the 5th gen and 6th gen labels. The main key difference between 4th and 5th gen was stealth. Some 4.5 gens had supercruise and sensor fusion so these are not 5th gen exclusive.

What is 6th gen?
A bit more speed
A bit more range
A bit more stealth
A bit more electrical generation
A bit more powerful radar
A bit more sensor fusion
Maybe lasers.

A 5th gen fighter design can get a mid life refresh with a more advanced adaptive engine, radar and stealth coating. Then technically it gains everything on this list. It becomes 6th gen.

It seems people want to define 6th gen as having Mach 2 supercruise and 1,000nm combat radius. This can only be achieved by 100,000+lb MTOW fighters.The F-22, Su-57 and J-20 are heavy class. So it makes sense to call the 6th gen designs super heavy.

I doubt a true 6th gen fighter design can fit on a French carrier. I can see it getting the 5.5 gen label as the size will limit how far it can exceed the F-35 benchmark. The smaller Gripen for example was always behind the Rafale and Eurofighter due to the lower range and smaller radar. It was hard to call the original Gripen a 4.5th gen fighter.

The public will not know if a design has 5th or 6th gen levels of stealth which makes this even harder.

I could see a super heavy weight 5th gen fighter getting incorrectly called 6th gen because the large size is associated with being 6th gen. The UK Tempest fighter could easily fall into this category depending on how high they set the performance targets. The Chinese 3 engine fighter might be a perfect example of this. It could be another foxbat moment.

We will eventually have people saying 5.25 gen and 5.75 gen depending how many of the 6th gen requirements are achieved. This will be incredibly annoying for some people as it is entirely open to interpretation.
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I am obviously talking about Europe only, I don't know why you're listing Russian projects (no I don't count Russia and Turkey as part of Europe).....
 
Ainen said:
IMHO, the highest likelihood of "foxbat moment" isn't TWR, it's that entire heavy branch of "zerstorers" is only part of the answer. It's quite difficult imagine J-36 being effective against jet shahed swarms.
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That particular engagement shouldn't even have a J-36 flying in it, but that should be J10s and/or CCAs. Maybe those JH-7As still in service.
 
Oops, missed this one.
insidersource said:
The J-36 is massive. Minimum of 150,000lb MTOW in my opinion. Weight scales to the cube. 20% of extra length, width and height is actually 73% more volume. The wingspan is reported to be over 20 metres and simple math points to a wing area more than double of the F-22 and J-20.

This is why I call it another Foxbat moment. The west thought the Foxbat was a 50,000lb class fighter and based on the engines and wingspan it would have had F-15 like agility. But the Foxbat was a 80,000lb class fighter that it performed like an F-4 Phantom.

It would not surprise me if the J-36 had lower agility than an F-111. Not a 6th gen air dominance fighter at all. A supersonic light bomber that has self defense capability. 50,000+lb of internal fuel designed to attack Guam.
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105-120klbs is F-111 weight, and remember how much of the fuselage is full of weapons bays and S-duct inlets.
 
More from Airbus:
Now the works committee of Airbus is talking about how they don't want Dassault.
Link:
www.hartpunkt.de

Airbus-Betriebsrat bevorzugt Fighter-Bau ohne Dassault

Der Vorsitzende des Gesamtbetriebsrats von Airbus Defence and Space, Thomas Pretzl, möchte beim Future Combat Air System (FCAS) am liebsten ohne den
www.hartpunkt.de www.hartpunkt.de

To be honest i would really love to See at which level the real problem sits and kick some Balls but ah well thats aboth my pay grade.
 
dark sidius said:
Nope , and Macron with only 11% of the population support is unable to push this program by his own , like I said the French part of the FCAS fighter is dead and it is realy sad for the French Air Force, because France alone is unable to pay for a 6th gen fighter program.
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I don't agree.
SCAF is not a fighter only.
A possible solution may be 2 differents airframe (a French and an Airbus), sharing the same weapon system (radar, countermeasures, comm...), the same engines, the same loud, the same drones.

As far as we can see now, the dispute is only about the fighter frame.
 
Let´s have them compete! That´s how it has been done since the dawn of humanity.

iu
 
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galgot said:
"Paris" or Macron has no authority on Dassault, it's a private company, and if they want to voice their opinions on how the program goes, they are entirely free to do so, fortunately.
As for everyone in the French political landscape supporting Dassault (even LFI or the commies would, they are defending a sovereign defence industry even more than Macron, as a post above shows), that's how/why France have domestic made jet fighters in the first place. Not gonna change any time soon. The question is more about how to build that next fighter with the Germans and Spanish, the Dassault way, or what the Germans want which is more the Eurofighter way.
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except that Dassault also rely on defense budget. Customer is king, and if Paris say "you have to work with X following Y rules and I will pay for it" DA will follow.
The sole thing is that no one can force Dassault to share its know how.
The Dassault battle is to find the best way to developp the best product possible, relying on the best athlets. N@uron pave the way. The Eurofighter case is now taught in all the high schools as something to avoid, but Airbus is stubborn with this bad organisation.
 
dark sidius said:
The biggest problem now is the money for a program like that.
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even 100 billions, over 40 years, is not a so heavy burden for defense budget.

See Rafale : is was a time called the billions chasm.... now it is widely exported (to the France scale) and contribute to our export balance. NGF will follow the same road.
 
BonPlan2 said:
even 100 billions, over 40 years, is not a so heavy burden for defense budget.

See Rafale : is was a time called the billions chasm.... now it is widely exported (to the France scale) and contribute to our export balance. NGF will follow the same road.
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It is a lot of money and nothing will move before another president in France, Macron have losing is credibility to fight for this program.
 
kqcke for you said:
To be honest i would really love to See at which level the real problem sits and kick some Balls but ah well thats aboth my pay grade.
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Apparently there's a faction within the German MoD that is pushing for a German-only combat cloud, with a focus on unmanned systems paired up with more Eurofighters and F-35s. That would kill FCAS and with it NGF.

https://table.media/en/security/news-en/fcas-air-defense-system-germany-wants-national-solutions

FCAS air defense system: Germany wants national solutions

The future of FCAS is more uncertain than ever: Instead of the Franco-German-Spanish cooperation, Berlin is aiming for its own project that relies on unmanned systems to complement the Eurofighter and the US F-35 fighter aircraft, the "Combat Fighter System of System Nucleus” (CFSN).

The focus will no longer be on the new Next Generation Fighter (NGF) from the French company Dassault, but on the Eurofighter and the US F-35, as part of CFSN, explained Martin Heltzel, who is responsible for FCAS at the BAAINBw, at the “Air Force Tech Summit” in Berlin on Tuesday. This is about strengthening "national technological developments," according to Heltzel. Germany would be the first country in Europe to operationalize “an unmanned platform” as part of CFSN, he said.

FCAS consists of an NGF and unmanned systems. They are to communicate within a “Combat Cloud” network. In the German CFSN, Eurofighters and F-35s, of which Germany has ordered three dozen, are to communicate with each other. France would be left out of this system. This would mean a de facto termination of the joint FCAS project and, in turn, increase dependence on the US F-35.

France continues to claim the leading role in the joint program. “We have not managed to agree on a system concept,” explained Colonel Jörg Rauber, responsible for FCAS at the Ministry of Defense. Above all, it is unclear what the Next Generation Fighter must be able to do. France attaches great importance to the aircraft being able to carry nuclear weapons and land on an aircraft carrier. Should FCAS fail with France, the Swedish company Saab would be ready as a partner, as CEO Micael Johansson explains in an interview with Table.Briefings.
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H_K said:
Apparently there's a faction within the German MoD that is pushing for a German-only combat cloud, with a focus on unmanned systems paired up with more Eurofighters and F-35s. That would kill FCAS and with it NGF.

https://table.media/en/security/news-en/fcas-air-defense-system-germany-wants-national-solutions
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And with that we see germany's (maybe even spains to some extant) plan B to FCAS. To be honest it came a lot later than i tought it would while primarly retaining the few parts that either worked good or are the "easier" bit.
 
kqcke for you said:
And with that we see germany's (maybe even spains to some extant) plan B to FCAS
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It's actually unclear if this is plan B, or the new plan A !

The German BAAINBw representative seems very comfortable writing off a new manned fighter, as if this is no longer considered to be the highest priority. Perhaps they have made a decision to go all-in on CCAs and unmanned aircraft, with a sovereign combat cloud and more Eurofighters. All provided by Airbus DS, so German industry might be happy with this new plan (perhaps they even prefer it to the old FCAS arrangement).

Certainly the German side seems to be paying only lip service to FCAS at this point... or they are playing very hardball.
 
BonPlan2 said:
I don't agree.
SCAF is not a fighter only.
A possible solution may be 2 differents airframe (a French and an Airbus), sharing the same weapon system (radar, countermeasures, comm...), the same engines, the same loud, the same drones.

As far as we can see now, the dispute is only about the fighter frame.
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It's literally the only solution left. They will never agree on the full specs sheet and these two competitors will forever butt heads. Even if they find an arrangement for phase 2, the same issues will come back again for the subsequent phases, as the contract must to be renegotiated each time if I'm not wrong. They definitely can't do it for 2040 like that, it's gonna slip more and more toward 2045.
 
BonPlan2 said:
I don't agree.
SCAF is not a fighter only.
A possible solution may be 2 differents airframe (a French and an Airbus), sharing the same weapon system (radar, countermeasures, comm...), the same engines, the same loud, the same drones.

As far as we can see now, the dispute is only about the fighter frame.
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Correct, SCAF is a striker with at least French nuclear capability, that happens to be decent in air-to-air. Or at least that's what France needs out of the program.



H_K said:
Apparently there's a faction within the German MoD that is pushing for a German-only combat cloud, with a focus on unmanned systems paired up with more Eurofighters and F-35s. That would kill FCAS and with it NGF.
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I think that's a stupid decision, as Germany cannot afford the development.

But I also think it's going to happen, which is honestly likely good for France!
 
Scott Kenny said:
Correct, SCAF is a striker with at least French nuclear capability, that happens to be decent in air-to-air. Or at least that's what France needs out of the program.

I think that's a stupid decision, as Germany cannot afford the development.

But I also think it's going to happen, which is honestly likely good for France!
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What BonPlan meant is that FCAS as a program is much broader than just the manned fighter component. It encompasses an unmanned component, armaments, avionics, engines, combat cloud and a couple other things.

They hinted at the other components still holding ground for cooperation, which would be a nice arrangement, but if the fighter component is split up, the rest follows. Dassault is already eager to pitch their own UCAVs, while Airbus is busy doing the same.

As for money, I think you'd be frightened at what the German government could fund if the will and incentive was there. But if that will and incentive exists is a different question.

Ultimately, the nails in the FCAS coffin are beginning to come together one by one, it's looking increasingly likely that France will pursue a watered down version on their own and Germany together with Spain and perhaps another partner seek to develop their own system as well.

When a partnership proves not fruitful, it's better to come to that understanding and quit without wasting much time. It's better for all parties involved so that they can shift focus on the follow on contracts for a new program.
 
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EmoBirb said:
Ultimately, the nails in the FCAS coffin are beginning to come together one by one, it's looking increasingly likely that France will pursue a watered down version on their own and Germany together with Spain and perhaps another partner seek to develop their own system as well.
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I wouldn't be surprised if the French manage to keep Spain on board as a partner. The French have a much better track-record of bilateral armament programs than Germany. Not to mention a stronger cultural affinity.
 
H_K said:
I wouldn't be surprised if the French manage to keep Spain on board as a partner. The French have a much better track-record of bilateral armament programs than Germany. Not to mention a stronger cultural affinity.
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You know that Spains supports Germany in this fight over FCAS? Spain and Germay also cooperating on the Eurofighter without mayor problems, why should they join France?
 
H_K said:
It's actually unclear if this is plan B, or the new plan A !
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It almost seems as if both Germany and France are falling back to the same "Plan B" approach of existing manned fighters + UCAVs. This doesn't mean that there can't still be collaboration under SCAF. This also doesn't rule out a new manned fighter in the longer term - maybe NGF just gets shoved back 10-20 years as a political fudge?

I'm not sure there's any good alternative Plan Cs for either side
 
dark sidius said:
It is a lot of money and nothing will move before another president in France, Macron have losing is credibility to fight for this program.
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Fully agree about Macron. A shame....

About money : yes it's a lot, but spread on 30 or 40 years, not too much.
 
H_K said:
I wouldn't be surprised if the French manage to keep Spain on board as a partner. The French have a much better track-record of bilateral armament programs than Germany. Not to mention a stronger cultural affinity.
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I hope so.
It was nearly the case with rafale, since Rainbow warrior affair....
 
H_K said:
It's actually unclear if this is plan B, or the new plan A !
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That can go both ways
H_K said:
The German BAAINBw representative seems very comfortable writing off a new manned fighter, as if this is no longer considered to be the highest priority. Perhaps they have made a decision to go all-in on CCAs and unmanned aircraft, with a sovereign combat cloud and more Eurofighters. All provided by Airbus DS, so German industry might be happy with this new plan (perhaps they even prefer it to the old FCAS arrangement).
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It likely is what Airbus DS ist asking but then again as far as we can tell most of FCAS isn't going anywhere anyway
H_K said:
Certainly the German side seems to be paying only lip service to FCAS at this point... or they are playing very hardball.
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Hard to say but per CPM its likely more the first than the latter.
defence-network.com

FCAS sucht den Kurs – Zwischen Konzept & Realität

Beim Air Force Tech Summit wurde deutlich, wie komplex und politisch aufgeladen das europäische FCAS-Programm ist.
defence-network.com defence-network.com
 
BonPlan2 said:
I don't agree.
SCAF is not a fighter only.
A possible solution may be 2 differents airframe (a French and an Airbus), sharing the same weapon system (radar, countermeasures, comm...), the same engines, the same loud, the same drones.

As far as we can see now, the dispute is only about the fighter frame.
Click to expand...
To my knowledge the Dispute about the airframe also affects all the other mayor developments except the Cloud/ communication/ datalink thing.
 
H_K said:
I wouldn't be surprised if the French manage to keep Spain on board as a partner. The French have a much better track-record of bilateral armament programs than Germany. Not to mention a stronger cultural affinity.
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Spain wouldn't be able to contribute much without Airbus. They'll naturally veer toward Germany because of this.
 
H_K said:
I wouldn't be surprised if the French manage to keep Spain on board as a partner. The French have a much better track-record of bilateral armament programs than Germany. Not to mention a stronger cultural affinity.
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That and a snow storm in Ougadougou.
Whats the name of the only Spanish company who actually builds aircraft? The same company that counts for more than 2/3 of the entire Spanish Aerospace sector?
The one who builds Typhoons in Getafe?
Yeah... The old CASA is called Airbus Spain nowadays.
 
Quite interresting article which also brings up another potential conflict point the engine.
This could also be a big deal breaker but lets wait and see. Afterall the year isn't over yet....
www.hartpunkt.de

Französische Verteidigungsministerin: Deutschland kann kein eigenes Kampfflugzeug bauen

Der französischen Verteidigungsministerin Catherine Vautrin zufolge verfügt Deutschland gegenwärtig nicht über die Fähigkeiten, um eigenständig ein Kampfflugzeug zu entwickeln.
www.hartpunkt.de www.hartpunkt.de
 
kqcke for you said:
To my knowledge the Dispute about the airframe also affects all the other mayor developments except the Cloud/ communication/ datalink thing.
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indeed, but it is always possible to have 2 frames (one Dassault and one Airbus) with same engines, radar, comm, electronic support....

The main crisis is about the sole frame. Why not a 15tons dry one, for french needs, ie carrier fitted and with deterrence capacity, and another one, slightly bigger (18tons), with uprated engines, for Germany and maybe Spain ?
The engine can be studied with a 13-14 tons full reheat thrust, derated to 11 or 12 tons for the french jet, at least at the early stage before MLU.
 
kqcke for you said:
Quite interresting article which also brings up another potential conflict point the engine.
This could also be a big deal breaker but lets wait and see. Afterall the year isn't over yet....
www.hartpunkt.de

Französische Verteidigungsministerin: Deutschland kann kein eigenes Kampfflugzeug bauen

Der französischen Verteidigungsministerin Catherine Vautrin zufolge verfügt Deutschland gegenwärtig nicht über die Fähigkeiten, um eigenständig ein Kampfflugzeug zu entwickeln.
www.hartpunkt.de www.hartpunkt.de
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I didn't understand why Germany wanted a heavier jet with EF against Rafale.
Same today : why do they want a heavier jet than the 15 tons one ? They don't use their jet in any cooperation air mission. No expeditionnary...
 
EmoBirb said:
One has to wonder by now why the French government continues to prop up the problematic Dassault rather than trying to bring the French components of Airbus into play to represent French interests in the program. It's not like Dassault has done anything significant to warrant their position,
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And wich military jet has Airbus France developped in the last 50 years ?

EmoBirb said:
It's not like Dassault has done anything significant to warrant their position, last thing they did was developing a sluggish delta canard strike fighter in 80s, so more than 40 years ago.
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Can you stop rage baiting please ... i super tiresome honestly.
We get get it, TAI and KAI are superior to Dassault.
 
BonPlan2 said:
indeed, but it is always possible to have 2 frames (one Dassault and one Airbus) with same engines, radar, comm, electronic support....
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And this is likely the end Result. Based on the latest sources its gonna be reduced quite a lot down to the cloud and maybe sensors? The UAV pillar is something most go national anyway and only left would be shared engine and airframe parts.
BonPlan2 said:
The main crisis is about the sole frame. Why not a 15tons dry one, for french needs, ie carrier fitted and with deterrence capacity, and another one, slightly bigger (18tons), with uprated engines, for Germany and maybe Spain ?
The engine can be studied with a 13-14 tons full reheat thrust, derated to 11 or 12 tons for the french jet, at least at the early stage before MLU.
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As far as i can tell they either are oblivious to this solution or its not good enough. Alteast for now something like this doesn't seem to be on the table but maybe i overlooked something
 
Titus K said:
And wich military jet has Airbus France developped in the last 50 years ?
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The invisible jet or havent you seen it yet^^

Titus K said:
Can you stop rage baiting please ... i super tiresome honestly.
We get get it, TAI and KAI are superior to Dassault.
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KAI, RAI, MAI, TAI
Oh well now im thirsty
 
BonPlan2 said:
I didn't understand why Germany wanted a heavier jet with EF against Rafale.
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What do you mean with that exactly.
BonPlan2 said:
Same today : why do they want a heavier jet than the 15 tons one ? They don't use their jet in any cooperation air mission. No expeditionnary...
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From the articles they want to be able to go non stop from germany to the eastern front and back without tanker. Likely a good payload is also planed given that its one jet for all jobs ( yes yes F-35 also exist). So with that a ~1.700km range would be needed or around 23% more than Eurofighter (in whatever the strike package is thats named for Eurofighter in wikipedia (and assuming we can carry the same payload in NGFs IWB)).
 

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