By Pierre Tran

Paris – Perhaps future masters students at business and journalism schools will be presented with the European future combat air system as a case study on how not to handle communications on a multi-billion euro military project loaded with political and industrial implications.

There appears to be a potential lesson to be learnt on how to confuse the public readership, with German government and company statements made Nov. 18, claiming industrial agreement on the FCAS, seen as a symbol of European sovereignty backed by partner nations France, Germany and Spain.

The reality is industrial agreement has not been reached, said the executive chairman of Dassault Aviation, a key industrial partner.

“After intensive negotiations, industrial agreements for the next phase of the program have now been reached at FCAS,” the German defense ministry said Nov. 18.

“Parallel to these industrial negotiations, it was also confirmed at the highest government level that a cooperative approach on an equal footing is being pursued in the project, which is under overall French responsibility,” the German ministry said.

The key element of the FCAS is the new generation fighter, due to enter service in 2040 as replacement of the Rafale and Eurofighter fighter jets.

Talks between the industrial partners Airbus Defence and Space and Dassault have dragged on for more than a year for a contract to build a technology demonstrator on the planned fighter, under phase 1B.

Airbus DS is the German industrial partner, Dassault the French partner and prime contractor, and Indra the Spanish partner.

The French Elysée president’s office followed the German government with a statement sent exclusively to the AFP news agency, pointing up the positive with political agreement on FCAS among the three partner nations.

In contrast to the Berlin statement, which said industrial agreement had been reached, Paris said the industrial partners were “on the point” of reaching an accord.

“The political agreement on FCAS is a big step forward and – particularly in the present international context – an important signal of excellent cooperation between France, Germany and Spain,” the office of president Emmanuel Macron said, adding that France will be lead partner on the project. The latter point of French leadership is also in contrast to Berlin’s claiming an “equal footing” on the project.

Visitors to the Elysée website that day would have learnt about the importance of Macron’s visit to Thailand, part of attending the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and also the president’s view on the importance of the French language.

But there was nothing on the FCAS and its importance to Europe in a time of conflict.

The French armed forces ministry stayed silent.

The Spanish government on that day, on its website tells English speakers of the €36.682 billion ($37.687 billion) that Madrid will receive from the European Union, and how Spain passed the eight million international air passenger mark in October. There was nothing on FCAS.

The French media Les Echos, Le Monde, and La Tribune led their websites late on Nov. 18 with what looked like a breakthrough on the long running FCAS story. The afternoon daily Le Monde recast its story the following day, pointing up the lack of contract signed by the key industrial partners, Airbus DS and Dassault.

Le Figaro, a daily owned by the Dassault family, did not run a story on the FCAS. There was no mention of the FCAS in an interview in the Sunday paper JDD with the armed forces minister Sébastien Lecornu, nor any mention of Franco-German relations, a senior reporter of Challenges business magazine said Nov. 20 on social media.

Challenges pointed up Nov. 19 the silence of the French defense ministry and Dassault reflected the fact that a full industrial agreement had not been reached.

“Ninety eight percent has been agreed, but Dassault will not sign if the remaining two percent is not resolved,” a source close to the dossier told the magazine.

That two percent factor appears to point up how the German political statement might have overstated the level of industrial agreement.

That separation between political and industrial reality can be seen in remarks of Eric Trappier, executive chairman of Dassault, when he went Nov. 21 on RTL radio.

“A political false-announcement was made,” he said. “I think the German authorizations – which were hard to obtain – came through and that led to leaks.”

“Not everything is in place,” he said, so it was a case of being a little ahead of oneself.

Asked whether Airbus and Dassault had signed a contract, he said, “No, not at the time we are speaking.

“We will see,” he said, when asked whether a signature might be made this week.

French prime minister Elisabeth Borne is due to visit Berlin Nov. 25, opening a political window for a further announcement on FCAS, if an industrial agreement were reached.

Trappier was invited on RTL in his capacity as chairman of the French UIMM trade association for the metallurgical industry.

Airbus DS and Indra said Nov. 18 on social media that industry talks had been “concluded,” just after the statement from the German defense ministry.

“We can confirm that discussions among industry and governments on the next phase of FCAS have concluded which represents a big step forward for this European flagship defence programme,” the companies said. The statement does not appear on their websites.

“Now a number of formal steps in the respective countries have to be taken in order to allow speedy contract signature…

“Therefore, we will provide further updates on the programme and the way forward in due time once the contract between industry and the three nations is ready for final signature.”

The powerful German Bundestag parliament must authorize any spending above €25 million, and its approval of the budget for FCAS appears to have led to leaks to the press.

The Financial Times, a U.K. business daily, reported Nov. 17 France and Germany, and Airbus DS and Dassault “were close to formally advancing to a crucial stage” of the FCAS project.

There is also a possible Jan. 22 summit of French and German cabinet ministers, Politico website reported, seen as an opportunity for statements on cooperation on tough issues such as energy and defense.

The backstory to the tangled news story is how the German industrial partner, Airbus DS, has effectively sought to be joint prime contractor to the new fighter jet, while Dassault has resisted giving up its position as the clear lead on program management and architect of the flight control system, protection of intellectual property rights, and work share.

Phase 1B of the demonstrator project is reported to be worth around €3.5 billion, equally shared among the partner nations.  There remains to be negotiations for later stages of FCAS work.

The total value of the FCAS is estimated to be €80 billion-€100 billion, and the project includes remote carrier drones and a combat cloud of extended communications network.

The U.K. has pledged to fly its demonstrator of the Tempest next generation fighter in 2027.

By Kenneth Maxwell

In Tiverton there is a statue of King Edward VII on the bridge over the River Lowman. The River Lowman joins the River Exe a short distance downstream and delineates the riverine boundaries of the old town of Tiverton in mid-Devon.

I pass by King Edward’s statue on my way into the town center after walking down from my house on Exeter Hill. The statue is inscribed: “Edward the Peacemaker.” King Edward VII reigned from 1901 until 1910. His statue was dedicated in 1912. This was only two years before the outbreak in 1914 of the First World War.

King Edward VII, like King Charles III, his great-great-grandson, had to wait a very long time before ascending to the throne. They both had very long-lived mothers: Queen Victoria in the case of Edward, and Queen Elizabeth ll in the case of Charles.

Prince Albert Edward of Wales enjoyed the brothels of Paris. He was a man with large carnal and gastronomic appetites. He was very considerably overweight. His Parisian “love chair” was carefully constructed so he did not crush his Parisian paramours.

His love of Paris was partly the reason for the “Entente Cordiale” of 1904 which ended a thousand years of intermittent Anglo-French rivalry.

Prince Albert Edward’s family was after all German. His father was Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. He was descended from the German Protestant Hanoverians. His first cousin was Kaiser Wilhelm of the Germany Empire. Yet during the First World War Germany was the enemy and Britain was the ally of France. In 1917 the British Royal family dropped the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha moniker and became instead the much more English sounding “House of Windsor.”

Prince Albert Edward of Wales, or “Dirty Bertie” as he was known, also had many other affaires, over fifty according to legend, including a long affair with Mrs. Alice Keppel, the great-great-grandmother of Mrs. Camila Parker Bowles.

In need of money to support her lavish lifestyle and with a husband whose distinguished name did not come with a supporting fortune, Alice Keppel specialized in rich older married men.  Prince Albert Edward was 56 and Alice was 29 when they first met. Queen Alexandria of Denmark, Edward’s wife, tolerated the affaire, but Alice Keppel was ejected from court when in 1910 King Edward VII died.

Camilla Parker Bowles is the former mistress of Prince Charles of Wales, now King Charles lll. She is now the “Queen Consort.” Camila Parker Bowles was the “third person” in the unhappy marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. But the late Queen Elizabeth ll apparently wanted Camila to have the title of “Queen Consort.” So she has it.

Mrs. Alice Keppel was King Edward’s favorite mistress. According to her daughter, Violet Trefusis, she “resembled a Christmas Tree, laden with presents for everyone.” Violet Trefusis had a long lesbian affair with Vita Sackville-West. Later she had a long time affaire with the domineering whip-in-hand sewing machine heiress, Winnaretta Singer. Violet Trefusis was purportedly portrayed as princess Sasha in Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando” and inspired the character of Lady Montdore in Nancy Mitford’s “Love in a Cold Climate” as well as Mirila in Harold Acton’s “The Soul’s Gymnasium.”

King Edward took care of his mistresses. Mrs. Kepple received a share in a rubber company and Edward’s friend Sir Ernest Cassel created endowments for her, and Edward’s own bankers and financial advisers managed her businesses.

She moved to the Villa l’Ombrellino overlooking Florence in the 1920s. The Second World War forced her to return to England, but she returned to Florence after the War where she died in 1947. She is buried in Florence’s Cimitero degali Attori (The Evangelical Cemetery of Laurels).

Violet Trefusis then became the long-time chatelaine of the Villa l’Ombrellino. She died in 1972.

In 2017, Camilla Parker Bowles, by then married to prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall, visited the memorial to Alice Keppel at St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Florence. She is purported allegedly to have told Prince Charles when they first met: “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-grandfather. I feel we have something in common.”

Curiously l knew Harold Acton. He was (in)famous as one of the eccentric “bright young things” at Oxford in the 1920s. In the end of my first year at Cambridge in 1961 with two fellow students l was invited to Florence where he was our host.

We visited him at his fourteenth century Villa la Pietra where his bedridden mother Hortense Mitchell (she was the daughter a Chicago banker and the source of the family wealth) used to pound on the floor with her walking stick while we were being grandly entertained by Sir Harold in a grand salon below.

He was much more interested anyway in my West Indian colleague. But we had a marvellous lecture on the Decameron from him at the empty casino at Bagni di Lucca especially opened up for the four of us. He took us to visit Osbert Sitwell at his castle Montegufoni, where Sitwell lived with his companion David Stuart Homer.

But Osbert Sitwell was away when we got there. A surly servant took us around and we had all to tip him generously as we left. We were treated to wonderfully delicious lunches overlooking the Tuscan countryside.

It is not clear to me why we were invited to Florence. Harold Acton had been thinking of donating his Villa and art collection to a university. Oxford declined the offer. Cambridge may also have been a potential candidate.

But a year later NYU accepted the gift. Though after twenty years of litigation by Harold Acton’s illegitimate half-sister, the Italian court decided in her favor and that she should have fifty percent of the value of Acton estate. The “last of the aesthetes” had evidently left a poison pill which Oxford (and potentially Cambridge) had fortuitously avoided.

Yet King Edward VII stands there incongruously on the bridge over the River Lowman in Tiverton, Devon, proclaiming peace in 1912 on the very eve of the First World War. It is a salutary reminder that war is never far away, nor is it any less dangerous at the end of 2022 than it was at the beginning of the last century.

Old empires are tottering again. New empires are rising. The tectonic global geo-political sheets are shifting under our feet yet again.

Though like “Edward the Peacemaker” in 1912 we remain largely oblivious to the real danger of stumbling, despite our best intentions, into a global conflict. History has not ended: Certainly. it did not in 1912: And not one fears in 2022.