Venom Gun Support Training at WTI-2-22

06/15/2022

A U.S. Marine Corps UH-1Y Venom assigned to Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1), conducts day and night gun tactics during Assault Support Tactics 4 (AST-4), Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) course 2-22, near Yuma, Arizona, April 19, 2022.

AST-4 provides the prospective WTIs the opportunity to plan, brief, and execute a night, long range battalion air assault to multiple objectives simultaneously in a medium threat environment while conducting five of the six functions of Marine Aviation.

04.19.2022

Video by Cpl. Shane Linder Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1

Australia and France: New Governments and Next Steps

06/14/2022

By Pierre Tran

Paris – Australia seeks to calm troubled waters by paying shipbuilder Naval Group (NG) €555 million (US $581 million) for sinking a large French submarine deal, with Canberra pledging to resume close relations with Paris.

That desire to be mates again with France follows the Australian Labor party winning last month’s general election, with Anthony Albanese taking up the prime minister’s office after the departure of Scott Morrison, leader of the conservative Liberal party.

It remains to be seen how Australia will rebuild those ties with France, in the wake of severe turbulence brought on by Canberra’s cancellation last September of the Shortfin Barracuda  project, once seen as the multibillion deal of the century for NG.

There may be political will to rebuild links between the two nations, but there remains bitterness at the business level in certain circles. A French executive who worked on the Australian project expressed deep skepticism on the outlook for cooperation.

“Just words,” the executive said, “there are no competitions, no concrete ideas, no details.”

On tenders, Australia is holding a competition for unmanned autonomous systems for a maritime mine countermeasures and military survey program, dubbed Sea 1905 MCM Tranche 1. The unmanned system will be fitted on ships based on the Arafura class of offshore patrol vessels, with media reports of a budget of A$3.3 billion -A$5 billion for the fleet of future mine warfare ships.

ECA group, a French underwater specialist, said May 2021 it has teamed up with a local partner, Total Marine Technology, for that competition. Saab Australia said last month it has partnered with Leidos, SeeByte, and Sonartech Atlas.

A restricted tender for the mission management system for that program comprises four bidders, namely Atlas Electronik, ECA, SeeByte, and Thales Australia, Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, an Australian magazine, reported last month.

Australia stands to lose submarine capability, national sovereignty, and jobs due to the cancellation, the executive said. It looks likely the Australian navy will wait 20 years to sail a nuclear-powered boat, seen effectively as under joint U.S. control.

If the submarine deal were the price Australia was willing to pay for U.S. security, there is uncertainty over U.S. political leadership to consider, the executive said.

The U.S. program for nuclear powered boats is fully committed, as is the U.K. with its Astute class of nuclear submarines, leaving little room to supply boats for the Australian navy, the executive said.

Australia had considered ordering two Virginia class submarines by 2030, Peter Dutton, the former defense minister, wrote June 9 in The Australian daily, sparking a row with the Labor government.

“You don’t defend your country and our national security with a media release,” Albanese told June 11 a press conference. “You defend it with operational capability. My government intends to concentrate on delivering rather than the statements that Peter Dutton has made that contradict all of the statements that he made while he was defense minister.”

The Australian navy is in bad shape, the executive said, with the Collins class of submarines aging, and there is a delayed start to building the Hunter class of frigates, based on the Type 26 frigate from BAE Systems.

Perhaps there might be Australian interest in the Airbus A400M transport aircraft, which has greater reach than the C-130, a defense specialist said. The A400M could tackle Australia’s lack of long-range capability.

The Australian air force flies seven Airbus A330 multirole tanker transport aircraft, badged as KC-30A and based at Amberley air base, near Brisbane, eastern Australia. A further two more units were considered in the 2016 defense white paper, the website of the Royal Australian Air Force reported.

That reach for long range was a key reason for Australia switching to the requirement for nuclear power on the submarine, dropping the diesel-electric Shortfin Barracuda, which would have been a modification of the nuclear-powered Barracuda built for the French navy.

The Suffren, the first of class of the six Barracuda boats, entered service June 3, and the newly appointed armed forces minister, Sébastien Lecornu, attended the high profile event at Brest naval base, northwestern France.

Lecornu met June 11 his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles, on the sidelines of the Shangri-La security conference in Singapore, after president Emmanuel Macron and Albanese had agreed the settlement on NG.

“He (Lecornu) expressed the wish that this agreement and the change of the government team will make it possible to overcome the crisis of confidence with Australia,” the French defense ministry said in a statement.

“France, Australia’s neighbor in the Pacific, namely because of New Caledonia, will listen to Australian proposals to project the bilateral defense relationship into the future, on the basis of operational cooperation and structuring projects,” the ministry said. There will be work meetings in Paris, it was noted.

Both sides, Albanese and NG,  used the phrase “fair and equitable” on the settlement on the  submarine deal.

Thales has its Australian unit, which supplies Bushmaster and Hawkei protected vehicles, and works on underwater systems and mine countermeasures. The Australian unit has generated exports worth A$1.6 billion over 10 years.

Thales holds 35 percent of NG, with the French state owning 62.3 percent.

Airbus Helicopters has fallen on hard times in Australia.

Australia last December decided to ditch its fleet of NH90 military transport helicopters, known locally as the Multi-Role Helicopter 90 Taipan, to be replaced by the Sikorsky Black Hawk and Seahawk. Airbus Helicopters is partnered with Leonardo Helicopters and Fokker Aerostructures on the NH90.

Australia is also replacing the Airbus Tiger armed reconnaissance helicopter with the Boeing Apache attack helicopter.

A Clean Slate

Just three weeks in office, Albanese told journalists June 11 he had talked to his French counterpart, Macron, and agreed financial settlement of €555 million to wipe the slate clean with NG, and how it was important to renew close ties with France.

“I thank him (Macron) for those discussions and the cordial way in which we are re-establishing a better relationship between Australia and France,” Albanese said, pointing up the cost of the cancellation, which he saw as a fumbled move.

“It brings the total cost of the former government’s failed policy to A$3.4 billion (US $2.3 billion). This is a saving from the A$5.5 billion that Senate Estimates was told would result from that program.”

France is a long standing ally, having fought side-by-side in two world wars, and also had a “significant presence” in the Pacific, amid tension in the Indo-Pacific region, he said.

Labor, then the opposition party, had backed the switch to a nuclear-powered submarine.

The financial settlement is intended to clear the decks with NG, which won a competition in 2016 and had expected to be approved for the next design stage last September. Instead, Australia sent notice of cancellation.

“Importantly, this draws a line under this issue, and I thank the Naval Group for the way in which they have conducted the relations,” Albanese said. “This procedure has gone through our appropriate approvals processes and ensures that we can now reset the relationship without this clouding that relationship going into the future.”

The settlement payment of €555 million follows the €840 million of sales NG booked for its work on the Australian future submarine project since 2016.

Details of the settlement are confidential for commercial reasons, Albanese said.

It is understood NG will pay subcontractors out of that settlement, as it closes down its Australia future submarine office, which is down to 50 staff, with 45 Australians and five French, after previously employing some 350 personnel.

“Naval Group and the Commonwealth of Australia have reached a fair and equitable settlement to bring a conclusion to the Future Submarine Program,” NG said in a June 11 statement, which declined to give an amount for the settlement.

“Naval Group also recognises the important work of those who contributed to the discussions leading to this agreement.”

NG has its Naval Group Pacific office in Sydney, working in research and development.

In 2016, the then Australian prime minister, Malcom Turnbull, said the French submarine project would create 2,800 local jobs and use Australian steel for the ocean-going boats.

Last September, NG had been expecting to sign an Australian two-year contract worth €1.4 billion for the basic design stage, having received approval on the system functional review.

Instead, Australia told NG the Shortfin Barracuda was cancelled. Talks started on financial settlement.

That cancellation was due to Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. setting up the AUKUS alliance, opening the way for Canberra to order nuclear-powered attack submarines, with help from its British and American allies.

Albanese said Macron has invited him to a Paris meeting, and that was “absolutely vital to resetting that relationship, which is an important one for Australia’s national interest.”

Unmanned Integration at Sea: A Perspective on Task Force 59

06/13/2022

By Robbin Laird

We are working on a longer term effort examining how autonomous systems can be integrated into fleet operations.

Most analysis of the way ahead with regard to maritime unmanned, remote or autonomous systems has focused on the challenge of shaping acceptance of trusted autonomous systems, which makes a great deal of sense.

But it is the mission purpose served for the FLEET which needs to be emphasized as well by such systems, and how the fleet evolution itself changes as mission delivery is performed by a redesign of the fleet as it does its distributed maritime operations differently from the past.

We are building our analysis around the kill web concept of operations approach.

With such an approach payloads within a cluster of combat capability are a key building block of operational capability, rather than simply focusing on the core platform defining a task force.

What autonomous unmanned surface vessels can provide, for example, are payloads for mission purpose, rather than being looked at as simply unmanned platforms.

Rather than a platform centered focus for concept of operations, we are focusing on distributed kill web operations which provide nodes in an overall integrated force.

This is how Ed Timperlake has described this aspect of the dynamics of change associated with a kill web operating force:

“In both an offensive and defensive combat engagement moment, successfully getting “weapons on” is essential.

“Using the famous OODA loop equation can bring a clear understanding of the complex dynamics in building a scalable combined fleet kill web payload utility (PU) function.

“Observe/Orient (O/O) is target acquisition (TA) and Decide Act (DA) is target engagement.

“Both TA and TE can be expressed in a very simple formula.

“The conceptual formula is TA and TE with more effective employment of all payloads available to the battle commander.

“It is the process of understanding and applying in combat the huge complexities of such a formula that is the challenge.”

And the Task Force 59 exercises last Fall can be seen as precisely engaging in “the process of understanding and applying” the payload utility function.

This is how a 5th Fleet press release on October 26, 2021 described their approach:

NAVAL SUPPORT ACTIVITY, BAHRAIN. On Oct. 26, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) completed exercise New Horizon, the first at-sea evolution for its new unmanned task force.

During the two-day training exercise, Task Force 59 integrated and evaluated new MANTAS T-12 unmanned surface vessels (USV) that operated alongside manned U.S. patrol craft and Bahrain Defense Force maritime assets.

This marked the first time NAVCENT integrated USVs with manned assets at sea in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations. New Horizon was also the first time for NAVCENT’s integration of USVs with manned assets at sea alongside partner forces.

“Working with our regional partners on unmanned systems integration is crucial to enhancing collective maritime domain awareness,” said Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of NAVCENT, U.S. 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces. “Bahrain, as our first regional partner to collaborate with Task Force 59 during an at-sea exercise, demonstrates the strengthening of our strategic relationship.”

The first phase of New Horizon, conducted Oct. 20, featured operators controlling the USVs aboard patrol coastal ship USS Firebolt (PC 10), while the vessels conducted high-speed maneuvers in formation.

The final phase on Oct. 26 brought together a larger force of manned and unmanned maritime and aerial assets from NAVCENT, the Royal Bahrain Naval Force (RBNF) and Bahrain Coast Guard. Participating units also included patrol boat USCGC Maui (WPB 1304), an SH-60S helicopter, a V-BAT unmanned aerial vehicle and RBNF patrol craft.

Both U.S. and Bahraini forces practiced operating the vessels in formation to strengthen mutual understanding and interoperability.

“This is a significant milestone for our new task force as we accelerate the integration of unmanned systems and artificial intelligence into complex, cross-domain operations at sea,” said Capt. Michael Brasseur, commander of Task Force 59. “Real-world evaluation is essential.”

NAVCENT established the task force Sept. 9. To focus U.S. 5th Fleet efforts on unmanned systems and artificial intelligence integration.

The U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations encompasses about 2.5 million square miles of water area and includes the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Red Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean. The expanse is comprised of 21 countries and includes three critical choke points at the Strait.

Featured Photo: Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, left, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces, shakes hands with Capt. Michael D. Brasseur, the first commodore of Task Force (TF 59) during a commissioning ceremony for TF 59 onboard Naval Support Activity Bahrain, Sept. 9. TF 59 is the first U.S. Navy task force of its kind, designed to rapidly integrate unmanned systems and artificial intelligence with maritime operations in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations.

A Maritime Kill Web Force in the Making

Exercise Sea Explorer 2022

Exercise SEA EXPLORER is the second of three training activities in the annual SEA SERIES to hone and certify Australia’s Amphibious Force.

The first exercise, SEA HORIZON, was a planning exercise in preparation for the subsequent SEA EXPLORER and SEA RAIDER exercises.

During SEA EXPLORER, soldiers, sailors, and aviators aboard HMAS Adelaide and United States Navy landing dock USS Ashland will practice the amphibious projection of personnel, vehicles and equipment at Cowley Beach in North-eastern Queensland from 1-15 June, 2022.

Jun 7, 2022

Australian Department of Defence

2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team

2nd Brigade Combat Team “BLACKJACK”, 1st Cavalry Division deployed Troopers, vehicles and equipment from Fort Hood, Texas to the National Training Center to test the brigade’s war fighting skills during a 21-day combined arms training rotation.

FORT IRWIN, CA.

04.17.2022

Video by Master Sgt. Miriam Espinoza Headquarters, 1st Cavalry Division Public Affairs

From the Amphibious Force to Expeditionary Seabasing: Supporting Mobile Basing as a Strategic Capability

06/12/2022

By Robbin Laird

I have argued that under the impact of the Osprey and the F-35B, the ARG-MEU is evolving into something more akin to a modular amphibious task force. As the U.S. Navy works ways to more effectively integrate such a development with the wider fleet, the emergence of new ways to build out the amphibious force into an expeditionary sea based force supporting the broader joint force have emerged as well.

I continued the discussion with Jim Strock with regard to this strategic trend as well as its importance. Jim Strock is the former Director of the Seabasing Integration Division at the USMC and an expert on the evolution of seabasing for the current force.

Why would one want to have an expeditionary seabasing capability?

Jim Strock: “The reason you need mobile bases in concert with fixed sites ashore is you’ve got to overcome the tyranny of time and distance. If you think of mobile bases operating in the Western Pacific, there’s a tremendous number of assets at the Navy, Marine Corps, and joint level that could be brought to bear and configured to accomplish a selected or certain type of missions by reconfiguring those assets into an expeditionary seabasing concept of operations.”

A key opportunity lies in reconfiguring platforms and assets which the joint force currently has into an expeditionary seabasing template. The Marines and now the U.S. Navy have Ospreys; the joint force have F-35s with the Marines having the most expeditionary version, the F-35B; and the Marines are adding a new heavy lift helicopter, the CH-53K, which can embed into the digital world of a kill web enabled force.

Strock also highlighted the importance in terms of capabilities which the joint force already has of what used to be called Joint High-Speed Vessels. There are 15 such vessels in the program, and they are now called Expeditionary Fast Transports or EPFs. Strock underscored: “They have substantial capability as part of a mobile base to sprint and deliver assets and personnel to selected locations. You’ve got other connectors that are in the pipeline.”

“Those ships can carry 600 short tons at 35 knots 1,200 nautical miles in sea state three. They have berthing for 104 embarked troops that they could keep for 14 days. They’ve got business-class airline seating for 312 troops that you could keep onboard for four days. They’ve got mess decks where they can feed them.

“They’ve got a 20,000-square-foot mission deck which was designed wide enough that you can drive a seven-ton truck and a trailer onto the mission deck, go forward, do a horseshoe turn, and come out the rear end again without having to back up. And then the flight deck is capable of launching or recovering 53 Kilos, and with certain flight deck coatings, could launch and recover V-22s. That’s all in the window sticker standard equipment right now on an EPF.”

The current Commandant of the USMC has highlighted the need to develop a light amphibious warship. Such a future capability may come to fruition or not, but Strock highlighted how the EPF could fill the gap.

Strock noted: “The only requirement they do not meet compared to the requirements for the Light Amphibious Warship is the EPFs cannot beach. And that’s a critical capability necessary to support Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations forces.  However, back in 2009,  the Army actually ran some experiments connecting  a Lightweight Modular Causeway System to the stern of a Joint High Speed Vessel and demonstrating the vessel’s ability to transfer equipment to unimproved beaching sites.

“In other words, the EPF is one of several platforms that are available right now for testing, demonstration, and proof of concept events with causeway systems at the joint level for expanding expeditionary sea basing capabilities.”

Put another way, by reshaping concepts of operations, in this case shaping expeditionary seabasing capabilities and projection of power ashore in a mobile basing construct, one can find key elements within the extant force which can be leveraged.

And even more importantly, we can build more such platforms at known cost points.

Expeditionary seabasing fits nicely into the strategic shift in force structure operations which I have referred to as modular task force operations, whereby one can mix and match platforms in a presence force and through connectivity can reach back to other force elements to augment the capabilities of that presence force.

Strock discussed the modular nature of the expeditionary seabase as follows:  “No two sea bases will ever be the same and no two mobile bases will ever be the same. They’re configured to do what they need to do.

“For example, a mobile base could operate as a maneuverable, survivable, sea-based node with any broader network of land-based and sea-based infrastructure sites designed to support the joint force in whatever operating environment it’s in. It cold be a single ship or multiple ships.

“And these mobile bases can bridge the gap between land-based sites and extend the operational reach of many of the new naval platforms that are in the program right now, to include manned and unmanned vertical and surface connectors.

“And logistically, the mobile base can serve as an intermodal transshipment point between strategic, operational, and tactical logistics pipelines, wherein the mobile base can receive supplies and equipment from strategic sealift shipping, reconfigure those assets into tailored support packages for supported units, and then the mobile base can make pre-planned or on-call deliveries to forces ashore via manned and unmanned vertical, surface, and undersea connectors.

“In effect, the mobile base is an afloat intermediate support or staging base that is not encumbered by a fixed or land-based site located within enemy threat range. And when I talk about strategic sealift shipping, if you’re in an extended duration operation and ultimately one of your sources of supply is the continental United States, supplies often times leave the continental United States via commercial shipping in 20-foot and 40-foot containers.

“You’ve got to have platforms at sea that can receive containerized supplies and break them down into what I call user-friendly units of issue.  Some gunnery sergeant on an island with a platoon of Marines doesn’t want two or three 20-foot containers dropped on him. He needs supplies that are far more tailored to support his operations. In other words, the mobile base can provide support when and where needed without overloading the logistics support capabilities currently planned to be positioned for forces ashore.

“And the Office of Naval Research has developed motion-compensated cranes, advanced mooring systems, and environmental ship motion forecasting capabilities that, when fully integrated, would be able to provide an at-sea precision lift and cargo transfer capability between vessels, thereby bringing seabased intermodal transfer to reality.”

“Such logistical capabilities are crucial to have a sustainable force. New assets like the Next-Generation Logistics Ship and the Light Amphibious Warship will be able to maneuver forces to faraway places, but unless those platforms have enough capacity to go back to where they came from without being replenished, when they get to their point of delivery, they may need to be refueled, potentially consuming assets that were originally positioned  for the units that need them.

“The idea of a mobile base being able to close in, launch and recover aircraft and surface craft  to resupply and replenish forces ashore, and then move out to rendezvous points to interface with strategic sealift shipping to  re-stock, is significantly different.

“If the force has mobile platforms, large ones that can give you an intermodal transshipment capability at sea, you can extend the operational reach and duration of your logistics platforms, be they vertical, surface, undersea, manned or unmanned.”

There is a clear need to have a realistic understanding of the challenge of sustainability and persistence in the distributed operating environment. Logistical support nodes are the definer of what the force can do from a persistence point of view. And with the very significant shortfall of military sealift command assets and their priority focus on supporting the strike fleet, that leaves a huge gap in how to support a forward deployed force projecting power into an area of interest.

Shaping expeditionary seabasing concepts of operations and building the key nodes in such a con-ops can support mobile basing as a strategic capability for the joint and coalition force going forward.

Strock raised a key point with regard to Host Nation Support and logistical sustainability.

A key advantage of an expeditionary seabasing con-ops is that the United States owns the key parts of the expeditionary seabasing force. While host nation support agreements would likely be part of any persistent stand-in force concept of employment, the joint force does not necessarily have to rely in the good will of Host Nation Support partners in a future crisis.

We closed by discussing the potential synergy between modular task forcing and modular ships which could enable such a task force. “One can clearly design ships to accommodate varying types of missions through the introduction of additional and/or updated baseline ship configurations.

“In other words, the ship really needs to have an open architecture with residual space, weight, and power to support current and emerging capabilities. Through the use of flexible ship general arrangements, you could facilitate the timely reconfiguration of ship compartments and spaces to meet the evolving requirements or what one might call adaptive modularity.”

He added that one could build in what one might call configured modularity, and that’s where you have individual capability sets that are already configured, or containerized, or packaged, where they could be put on any number of different platforms in order to accomplish a mission.

In other words, “if you focus on the point that platforms need to be thought through in their ability to rapidly reconfigure and readily adapt, and to accomplish other selected missions, such a capability could clearly empower expeditionary seabasing and its ability to support configurable modular task forces.”

We have recently published two books which highlight key aspects of why mobile basing is a key part of the redesign of effective concepts of operations going forward for the joint force. The featured graphic highlights one of the chapters in the making of the kill web book. 

The USMC Transformation Path: Preparing for the High-End Fight

A Maritime Kill Web Force in the Making

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lost Decade for Europe’s Next Generation Fighter?

06/10/2022

By Pierre Tran

Paris – The European partner nations France, Germany and Spain looked like they were losing a decade due to a delay in launching a prototype for a next generation fighter jet, Eric Trappier, executive chairman of Dassault Aviation, said June 7.

“Between us, 2040 is already gone because we cannot get started, and the negotiations will certainly be long, not for this particular phase but the following one, which will take some time,” he said at Paris Air Forum, a conference organized by La Tribune, a financial news website.

“For 2040, there will certainly be a Mk1 ‘perhaps under certain conditions…’ so we are looking at the 2050s,” he said.

Talks appear to have broken down between Dassault and Airbus, the German industrial partner, for a phase 1B contract to build a technology demonstrator for the fighter. The fighter is at the heart of a future combat air system, backed by France, Germany and Spain.

The demonstrator is due to fly in 2027 with remote carrier drones, key elements of FCAS.

The German unit of Airbus declined to sign late last year the contract for phase 1B drafted by Dassault, the French prime contractor. Airbus is seen as effectively seeking to be joint prime contractor rather than a subcontractor to Dassault’s leading role as prime and architect.

Airbus, Dassault, and Indra are industrial partners respectively for Germany, France and Spain on FCAS. The Airbus unit at Manching, southern Germany, supports the Eurofighter Typhoon, while Dassault builds the Rafale at Merignac just outside Bordeaux, southwest France.

Airbus is seeking what it sees as the “right level of collaboration.” “We have some industrial difficulties in terms of deciding who does what in this,” Michael Schoellhorn, chief executive of Airbus Defence and Space, told the conference.

There are six industrial pillars on FCAS ready to start, he said, and everyone was waiting for the pillar for the new fighter to be launched. “There is one pillar in which we have difficulties, which I would describe as combining leadership and maitre d’oeuvre (prime contractor) — which we do not dispute at all — with the right level of collaboration,” he said. “This is what needs to happen for it to be successful.”

The right level of collaboration was the best way to put creativity, intelligence, and money of the companies involved to work, he said.

Joël Barre, head of Direction Générale de l’Armement, the French procurement office, said he hoped there would soon be a settlement in the industrial dispute. “I hope we find a way out in the next few weeks,” he told the conference. “The present situation cannot go on forever. The preparation work which has been agreed should get started.”

An efficient governance and industrial organization called for a clearly identified prime contractor, and this should be the most competent, the one with the highest level of expertise, he said.

Barre has made clear Dassault should be in the pilot’s seat. “Airbus should sign the contract that Dassault has proposed,” he told May 4 the defense committee of the French senate. “I agree with you, chairman, that we should be firm with the German side on the commitments which have already been made —  particularly the industrial organization which calls for clear responsibility for each (industrial) pillar,” he said.

“There needs to be a prime contractor and architect for the aircraft. The best in the domain should be appointed, namely Dassault France, not Airbus Germany,” he said, and there should be balance between the two countries on all arms programs run on a cooperative basis.

The DGA chief appears to have called for political pressure to get the phase 1B contract signed. Barre told the senators that he had proposed the three partner nations – France, Germany and Spain – draft a statement of intent saying they welcomed the signing of contracts for phase 1B and they would apply the measures set out in the cooperation agreement. “I have made a proposal to my counterparts along these lines and I expect their reply in the next few days,” he said, adding that he was due to meet his German counterpart May 10.

President Emmanuel Macron and his German counterpart, Olaf Scholz, were also due to meet around that time. “I hope we will be able to break through this deadlock,” he said. Barre had met his German counterpart last month, the DGA said.

The three partner nations are drafting that joint declaration and the aim is to remind the nations and companies of the conditions for moving from phase 1B to the following phases, it is understood. That high-level reminder carries hopes Airbus will feel the political pressure, accept leadership by Dassault, and sign the contract.

Scholz said at a press conference at the May 9 Berlin meeting with Macron that he wanted to see Franco-German arms projects speeded up. Besides FCAS, work appears to have ground virtually to a halt on a joint project for a main ground combat system (MGCS), comprising a heavy tank and unmanned land systems to replace the Leclerc and Leopard 2 tanks by 2040.

Macron had earlier that day given a keynote speech in Strasbourg, calling for creating a broad “European political community” to boost defense and security beyond the 27 member states of the European Union, and renewed that call in Berlin.

France and Germany are due to hold a ministerial summit meeting in the latter half of July, and the FCAS project is expected to be among the subjects on the table.

The Government Counts

At the La Tribune conference, Trappier said the FCAS project was not a concern solely for Dassault, but also for the French government and other companies on the project. It was not clear there was a plan B within FCAS, he said, but it was certain Dassault had its own plan B distinct from the Franco-German FCAS project. “Is there a plan B independent of FCAS while meeting the aims of FCAS, namely a large scale system which is interoperable with European services and Nato and the U.S?” he said. “Then the answer, naturally, is ‘yes.’”

A company needs to prepare for the unexpected, he said, and Dassault is working on upgrades of the Rafale, which has at least another 50 years of service. Barre told May 4 the senate committee France was pursuing an upgrade of the Rafale to an F5 standard to 2035, when asked what would happen if the FCAS problem failed to be solved.

Scholz’s predecessor, Angela Merkel, and Macron announced the FCAS project in 2017, seen then as a response to the U.K. voting in favor of the Brexit vote to leave the European Union. The fighter jet is the first pillar in FCAS, with Dassault assigned lead partner on the fighter. The other six pillars are the engine, remote carriers, combat cloud for network communications, simulator labs, sensors, and stealth.

Barre heads the DGA, which places orders and manages arms programs for the services, and leads the state-backed export drive for French weapons around the world. The budget for phase 1B on the demonstrator is reported to be €3.6 billion ($3.9 billion), followed by phase 2 worth €5 billion, with the demonstrator due to fly in 2027. The total budget is estimated to be some €80 billion, requiring international cooperation.

The French, German and Spanish governments signed a cooperation agreement Aug. 30 last year, and the industrial partners were expected to sign their contracts after that. Companies have signed contracts on the six other industrial pillars, with the fighter contract awaiting signature by Airbus.