Il Regno Unito apre alla Germania che si unisce al progetto del futuro caccia

I know the Head of BAE’s GCAP division was in germany yesterday, giving a talk on GCAP to the German air industrialists. Not sure if that was coincidental or not, but certainly good timing considering the failed meeting between FCAS members last week, and the final attempt today!

I imagine to get on boarded now will be fairly tricky and would need to be work share on GCAP, rather than the demonstrator.

This story is based on [this answer to a written question](https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2025-12-15/99958). Even for the famously vague nature of these responses it’s very light on detail, and I don’t think it’s intended to signal anything different to what is generally believed – that Germany would be welcome to buy but delays to the program caused by renegotiation of the agreements to include Germany as a partner are unlikely.

Did they not learn their lesson from Tornado and Typhoon? As nice as it is to have another partner to share costs with Germany has a record for holding Aircraft projects up and sometimes over the silliest things like a panel being blanked over if it’s not used on a particular variant.

Apparently, with this invitation, Britain is driving the final nail into the coffin of the crumbling France-Germany-Spain alliance for developing a new fighter jet.
I doubt Germany will be made a full member of the UK-Italy-Japan alliance, but on the other hand, Germany could be granted significant preferential terms when purchasing the new fighter. Possibly Spain and Sweden would be brought in under similar conditions.
Undoubtedly, this would be a great deal for Germany and a bad one for France, which would have to shoulder the entire alternative fighter program alone.

Can’t let Germany join, not enough coastline.

This isn’t new, they’ve said that since the beginning that after the current structure with Italy and Japan was locked and the workshares determined, they’d be open to let any country join (cause why say no to more money).

But that would be a dumb move for Germany. GCAP won’t offer them any R&D perspectives, maybe drones (although BAE signed an agreement with Turkey’s TAI about drones) but that’s it.

Germany would go from anywhere between 25%-33% of the fighter jet development (if France has 50% and the rest is shared between Germany and Spain) + 50% of the engines + the lead on drones and combat cloud with FCAS to a completely minor share of GCAP? How does that make sense?

And let’s not forget the lead that Germany has on the MGCS main battle tank program with France (although that is going nowhere as well and Germany is developing an interim tank right now). I thought Germany wanted to develop its aviation industry to be able to design fighter jets on their own? Joining GCAP would be a huge step back since they wouldn’t be involved in developing the engines (the area where Germany’s industry is lacking the most) or the airframe (Japan isn’t going to accept any changes to the current structure).

So they’d be joining GCAP just to spite France.

Maybe we should rename this sub into europeinwar or something

Germany won’t get any significant workshare in this setup, which would lead to it losing what remains of its strategic capability to design manned fighter aircraft for good. If that is the offer, then we might stay in FCAS as well and accept France’s demand.

Both ain’t gonna happen.