During the 2026 annual press conference today, the official slide showed only a question mark for the Future Combat Air System (FCAS). The room, however, was packed with German journalists, and it was clear from the first questions that everyone had come for one thing: to hear what Éric Trappier really thought about SCAF.

A question mark on the slide, not in the room

On the main presentation, SCAF appeared as a simple title followed by a question mark – a visual way of saying that the future tri-national fighter remains an open file rather than a programme on rails.

Trappier did not devote a formal speech to it, but in the Q&A he more than compensated, using the opportunity to restate Dassault’s red lines and frustrations in very direct terms. He made it clear that, from his perspective, what Airbus has been pushing for looks a lot like a Eurofighter-style industrial model. For Trappier, that model is precisely what should be avoided if the three countries want an actionable plan, credible deadlines and the level of technical coherence required for a next generation combat aircraft.

Trappier did not hide his criticism of the “co-co-co” style of governance that, in his view, characterised big cooperative platforms such as Eurofighter TYPHOON and Airbus A400M (a cooperative model with as many co-leaders as countries, all primes and all supposed to share leadership equally). Without going into detail, he drew a clear contrast between these large, slow and compromise heavy programmes and the way RAFALE has been managed, with a clearly identified design authority and a more compact decision making chain.

His message was simple enough for a non specialist audience: if you repeat the Eurofighter recipe for a sixth-generation system, you should not expect different results. In other words, SCAF cannot just be another job sharing exercise; it needs a governance structure that allows someone to actually take decisions, lock configurations and deliver an aircraft that flies as soon as possible, as he insisted several times.

The leadership battle over Pillar 1

This is where the core of the dispute lies. Trappier said Dassault could live with Airbus leading the other pillars of SCAF, but not the first one – the new fighter itself. On that central element, he has consistently refused the idea of Airbus leadership, and he repeated that position again in front of German media present in the room. The reason, as he presented it, is not just a question of national pride or workshare. Trappier’s argument is that Airbus simply does not have, today, the technical skills to act as design leader for a combat aircraft in the same way Dassault does, after decades of continuous fighter development culminating in RAFALE.

For him, asking Airbus to drive the fighter pillar would amount to weakening the very heart of SCAF before it even takes off. As we already underlined on FW MAG, behind this leadership debate lies a deeper divergence between political cultures and industrial reflexes in Paris and Berlin.

Germany tends to favour broader multilateral frameworks and wide participation, both on the military and industrial side, even if that complicates governance and spreads responsibilities. France traditionally leans towards a more pragmatic approach: a smaller circle of participants, a clear leader, and a willingness to move ahead even if everyone is not fully on board. That difference explains why a Eurofighter-like model can appear attractive in Berlin, where the priority is often to accommodate partners and secure buy in, whereas in Paris the priority is often to keep a strong, sovereign design authority that will still be there when tough configuration choices need to be made. It also feeds into the French fear that SCAF could turn into a political symbol rather than a programme built around a technically coherent aircraft.

Indeed, part of the blockage, Trappier suggested, is political as much as industrial: when Berlin and Paris launched SCAF in 2018, their leaders neither thought through these governance issues nor updated the project architecture in time as frictions emerged. In his view, carving the effort into successive phases was a structural mistake; the programme should have been funded and launched in one go from studies through to a flying demonstrator, and only then should governments have decided whether to converge on a single system or accept a split.

Under that alternative approach, he argued, a demonstrator would already be in the air today, instead of having to renegotiate responsibilities and rules of the game at every incremental step – a process that has made any attempt to accelerate the calendar significantly more difficult.

“Germany is not the problem, Airbus is”

Trappier took pains to distinguish between Germany as a partner nation and Airbus as an industrial counterpart. He reminded the audience that cooperation with German industry has worked well in the past, citing the ALPHA JET with Dornier as a positive experience of bilateral collaboration. The problem, in his words, is Airbus – more precisely, certain parts of Airbus Defence & Space that, in his view, do not really want to work with Dassault on a model that recognises Saint Cloud’s leadership on the fighter.

He also criticised the way Airbus’ position has been communicated, indirectly via German unions and intermediate bodies such as BDLI (German Aerospace Industry Association) instead of being clearly and directly spelled out at executive level. The sub text was clear: Dassault is willing to cooperate, but not to be dragged into a governance system where no one can truly lead and where industrial posturing replaces straightforward negotiation.

In that sense, Trappier’s comments were less about closing the door on SCAF and more about saying that, in its current form, the door does not lead anywhere useful.

EUROMALE as a “compensation”

One of the more striking points of the Q&A was Trappier’s reminder that Airbus’ leadership on the European MALE drone – EUROMALE – was part of the broader balance of power between the two groups. He explained that Dassault can perfectly accept a role as subcontractor on EUROMALE, with Airbus as prime, and that this arrangement has not been a source of friction in itself. What he revealed, however, is that this leadership on EUROMALE was originally understood as a sort of compensation for Dassault’s leadership on SCAF. In other words, the grand bargain was supposed to be: Airbus leads the European drone, Dassault leads the new fighter.

The current tensions are therefore not just about workshare on a single programme, but about a perceived breach of that initial balance. By putting that fact back on the table, Trappier was sending a message not only to Airbus but also to governments: if the original political deal is quietly rewritten in favour of one industrial player, it is hardly surprising that the other pushes back.

A less analytic, very political SCAF story

For the German journalists who were present in Saint Cloud – an unusual sight at Dassault’s annual press conference – this Q&A was probably more revealing than any slide could have been. They heard a CEO who says he is ready to work with German partners and accepts Airbus as prime on some programmes, but who refuses to dilute his company’s fighter design DNA into a co-co-co structure that, in his view, has already shown its limits.

In the end, that is perhaps the simplest way to read the lone question mark on the SCAF slide. It does not mean Dassault has no answers; it means that, for now, the questions that really matter are political and industrial ones – who leads what, on what basis, and with which lessons learned from past European programmes.

For Trappier, the paradox is that France no longer has a capability problem, only a money problem. Off the record, he summed it up bluntly: if Paris asked Dassault to build a national next generation fighter, the company would – because it can. The bottleneck, he implied, lies in finding the few dozen billion euros such a project would demand at a time when French public finances are already under acute pressure. Industrial know-how, design authority and a coherent governance model are all there; what is missing is the political decision to shoulder the full financial burden alone rather than diluting it – and complicating it – in a fragile multinational compromise.

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