From founding partner to guest
Two weeks ago, the FCAS program still existed . Spain joined that program in 2019, two years after Paris and Berlin founded it. It contributed money, industry, and got a seat at the table. The canceled fighter jet was valued at around €100 billion, and its first flight had already been delayed until 2029.
What Spain loses with this withdrawal is not just an aircraft; it's the founding partner position it worked so hard to achieve.
The alternative has a name and a headquarters, and it's not Madrid. It's called Team Gen 6, and Airbus presented it at the
ILA air show in Berlin . It brings together seven German companies (Diehl, Hensoldt, MBDA Deutschland, MTU, Rohde & Schwarz, Liebherr, and Autoflug) and six Spanish ones: Airbus Spain, Indra, GMV, Grupo Oesía, ITP Aero, and Sener, while Saab is considering joining.
The initiative originated in Germany, and Spain is the guest of honor. France will continue on its own, and Germany and Spain, together, are starting anew.
That is the
question on the table today, although no one is asking it aloud:
whether Madrid is negotiating as a co-founder of a European program or as a participant in a German project . It's not the same to contribute a third of the funding and demand a third of the work as it is to join a framework already designed by someone else.
The engine problem
There remains the problem that the FCAS never solved and that the new program inherits intact: the engine . The powerplant of the canceled fighter relied on Safran and MTU. But without France, Safran is out of the equation, and the propulsion of the future aircraft would fall to MTU and the Spanish company ITP Aero. Whoever designs and manufactures that engine will determine how much real sovereignty Europe retains over its fighter, because a sixth-generation aircraft is no more autonomous than the engine that powers it.
