BERLIN — Plans by France, Germany and Spain to jointly build a cutting-edge fighter jet may be dead. Germany’s aerospace ambitions are not.

“Germany was always a pioneer of aviation,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the opening of the ILA Berlin air show on Wednesday, presenting a new aviation strategy meant to bind together civil flight, military aerospace, innovation and national security.

The confidence underlines that Germany feels freed after the collapse of the Future Combat Air System fighter jet component, which ended thanks to irreconcilable differences between France’s Dassault Aviation and Germany’s Airbus Defence and Space.

But unlike Spain, which spends little on defense and has a less-developed military-industrial sector, and technologically advanced but cash-strapped France, the mood at the Berlin air show underlined the feeling that Germany has the technology, the companies and the fiscal headroom to take on a gargantuan project like building a cutting-edge warplane.

Merz sought to turn the end of the fighter-jet effort with France from a diplomatic embarrassment into an industrial opening. He said that ending the long-running deadlock would “open up new possibilities for industry” to move ahead on building a modern combat aircraft by other routes.

It shows that Germany is beginning to talk like a country that expects its money to translate into leadership.

For decades, France — one of Europe’s two nuclear powers with a historically muscular military — held the psychological advantage over Germany in defense.

France had Dassault and its Rafale warplane, a nuclear mission, aircraft carriers and a state tradition that treats aerospace as an expression of national power. Germany, by contrast, was more comfortable inside multinational programs — powerful, rich and technologically capable, but rarely eager to be a prime mover.

Diverging fiscal paths

The balance is changing. 

Under NATO’s definition, Germany overtook France in defense spending in 2019, when Berlin spent €46.9 billion compared with France’s €44.2 billion.

By 2029, Germany is expected to spend €153 billion a year on defense. That’s about 3.5 percent of GDP, in line with NATO’s target for 2035 and the country’s most ambitious military expansion since reunification. France, by comparison, plans to reach €72.8 billion in 2029 thanks to an updated military planning law now before the French parliament.

France faces far tighter fiscal constraints, and budget watchdogs warn that the extra defense effort could mean politically fraught social spending cuts. Germany’s public debt is 63.5 percent of GDP, while France’s stands at 115.6 percent.

While Paris faces financial headwinds, it does have tech experience. The Rafale was developed by Dassault, and the company helped finance it thanks to strong export sales; the United Arab Emirates’ 2021 order for 80 Rafale F4 jets was a massive cash injection.

But if it wants to develop its own sixth-generation fighter, as Dassault CEO Éric Trappier repeatedly said his company had the capacity to do, it will have to lock in future exports. The overall FCAS program has been valued at around €100 billion, a scale that would be challenging for France to finance alone.

But exports also carry risks. Paris had hoped Abu Dhabi would help finance the Rafale F5 upgrade, but talks collapsed after the Emirates sought deeper involvement in development and access to advanced technologies, according to La Tribune.

It underlines the original logic behind FCAS — France has the deeper warplane-building technology, while Germany has the larger checkbook.

But now German industry is moving quickly into the space left behind by France.

An Airbus-led group of defense companies, dubbed Team Gen 6, this week submitted a position paper to the German government on a sixth-generation fighter jet project. The group includes Airbus, Diehl Defence, Hensoldt, Liebherr, MBDA, MTU Aero Engines and Rohde & Schwarz.

Michael Schoellhorn, head of Airbus Defence and Space, said German industry had “the expertise, the technologies, the capacity, and the clear determination to develop and build FCAS and a sixth-generation fighter jet — for Europe and with Europe.”

Schoellhorn’s comments show that Germany is not simply offering to contribute to Europe’s next combat aircraft. It is offering itself as the industrial center of gravity.

“We do not favor Germany going it alone,” he said. “We think European. But we want German industry to have a central role.”

Still, more than money is needed to build a cutting-edge stealth fighter plus the drones, surveillance and computer systems needed to survive on a future battlefield. Germany will need partners, an export strategy, engineering authority and military requirements that can survive political cycles. 

But the tone at ILA was not one of defeat. In a morning appearance alongside Schoellhorn, German air force chief Lt. Gen. Holger Neumann spoke the language of urgency, saying the Bundeswehr needed answers “today — not in one or three years.” 

Merz summed up Germany’s new confidence.

“Germany presents itself as a country that lives the future of flight and invests in it,” the chancellor said. “We are an attractive location for the entire aviation industry,” one that stands “at the top of the world” with innovations in civil and military aerospace.

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