Why the Scaf, the European combat plane, never took off

“No, Scaf is not dead” insisted Emmanuel Macron as recently as last February. In recent months, the French president seemed to be the only one who still believed in the “Air Combat System of the Future”, this ultra-modern fighter plane project developed with great difficulty by France in partnership with Germany since 2017. After almost ten years of being bogged down, the German government Friedrich Merz has just officially killed the Scaf. “President Macron and the Federal Chancellor have reached the joint conclusion that the companies cannot agree on the construction of a common combat aircraft,” the German government communicated on Monday June 8. A few hours later, the Élysée announced that “the German authorities considered that it was not possible to further press the companies concerned”.

The two companies in question are Dassault Aviation, the flagship of French defense aviation, and Airbus Defense and Space, a European company which operated on behalf of Germany on this issue. For the Franco-German couple, the objective of this 100 billion euro project was to replace French and German combat aircraft – the Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon – with a future common system and to invest in European defense. It was later joined by Spain via Airbus.

The endless battle for the governance of Scaf

As soon as the project was launched in 2017, a structural disagreement appeared between the two firms. The blockage concerns the distribution of work, and especially the role of prime contractor for the future combat aircraft. During phase 1, Dassault Aviation obtained approximately 38% of the project’s workload, compared to 62% for Airbus (32% Germany, 30% Spain), which immediately crystallized the tension over the balance of the program. It also gets stuck on governance: Dassault wants to keep the technical management of the fighter (choice of architecture, design decisions, integration of technologies…), but Airbus refuses a role of simple subcontractor and claims effective co-management with equivalent decision-making power. Representing several national entities, Airbus has. of a more fragmented but politically heavier industrial and decision-making weight.

In practice, this creates a situation where no major decision on the architecture of the aircraft of the future can be taken without Franco-German political arbitration. Over the years, blockages followed at each critical stage of the Scaf’s development. Dassault Aviation has made it known on numerous occasions that it considers the governance it shares with Airbus and the Germany-Spain tandem to be ineffective. For the French aircraft manufacturer, responsibility for the aircraft cannot be shared without diluting the effectiveness of the project. Faced with these disputes, phase 1B, signed in December 2022 and which was to give rise to the design and production of a demonstrator – that is to say a prototype which should have flown by 2026 – was never carried out.

“With or without France”

In September 2025, tension rises and discussions heat up. In the European press, information is leaking indicating that industrial partners are at a critical point. Unless there is an agreement by the end of the year, Berlin would be ready to call on other partners to replace Paris in the European fighter plane project. Sweden and even the United Kingdom are then on the list of candidates. Germany also plans to simply continue alone with Spain via the participation of its manufacturer Indra.

“There will be a combat plane, with or without France” warns a German source in the pages of the Financial Times. According to Politico, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed, during a meeting with Airbus, his dissatisfaction with “pressure from Paris” to obtain a “disproportionate role” in this construction. During the summer, the German defense media Hartpunkt reported that Dassault was pushing to obtain 80% of the work on the so-called NGWS process, in which these combat planes are part. An accusation that Dassault immediately denied but which nonetheless provoked the anger of Berlin.

The French response came the day after this German declaration. During a press conference on September 23 on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of a new factory, the CEO of Dassault, Éric Trappier, affirmed that his company is capable of building “all by itself from A to Z” the future European combat aircraft. Six months later, in March 2026, the break seems ready to be consummated. The boss of Dassault warns that “if Airbus maintains the probability of not working with Dassault, the project is dead”. “We respect our commitments to the letter. It is Airbus which does not respect the equation from the beginning,” he adds.

A two-plane solution?

The political actors seem to have lost control of the project. On the set of BFMTV, the Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin admitted last January that the French state no longer has any leverage to get industrialists to agree. Over the months, the German Chancellor himself began to publicly question in the media the relevance of such a cooperation project launched by his predecessor Angela Merkel. “The French need an aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons and operating from an aircraft carrier. This is not what we currently need in the German army,” he emphasizes in the German podcast Machtwechsel. The solution of building two planes was put on the table by Airbus, but very quickly deemed “unbearable” by France.

Last April, French and German leaders attempted a final relaunch of discussions between industrialists to break the deadlock. “Our job is to ensure that they get along,” assures Emmanuel Macron, who wants to believe in saving his Franco-German defense project. But rather than bringing people together, mediation ends up confirming disagreements. A few weeks later, the German mediator announced that he had reached a clear conclusion: a common combat aircraft was no longer realistic under the current conditions of the program.

This June 8, it was ultimately Chancellor Friedrich Merz who “recommended to President Macron not to pursue the project to build a common combat aircraft”, according to information from the Monde. If the fighter plane pillar is abandoned, the other components of the Scaf – such as drones and “cloud combat” – could, according to Reuters, continue in a reduced form.