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Europe is running out of time to avoid wasting billions on building two rival fighter jets, the head of Airbus warned.
Guillaume Faury, the aerospace and defence giant’s chief executive, said the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) and the rival Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) risked developing different technology standards and parts, leading to significantly higher costs as a result.
At a press conference in London, he said: “There are plenty of opportunities to bring those programmes close to each other so we don’t spend all the money twice.
“If you want to create value and efficiency, spend less money on R&D and add volumes to lower costs, you need to have countries coming together with capacities that are the same.”
The FCAS, led by Airbus, and GCAP, spearheaded by BAE Systems, are both developing a replacement for the Eurofighter Typhoon.
Plans to replace the Eurofighter Typhoon with a new stealth fighter originally envisaged a single model to be built by a consortium involving all of the region’s warplane specialists.
However, Airbus’s German defence arm instead split from BAE to ally with Dassault of France on FCAS. BAE teamed up with Leonardo of Italy and Japan’s Mitsubishi on the rival programme.
Mr Faury said that without alignment of the rival projects, Europe would unnecessarily sap defence budgets by paying double for capabilities that could have been shared.
The programmes are at the technology-development stage and will have diverged too far to be brought together within two years, Mr Faury warned.
He said: “Governments need to sit down when they have a clear view of the specifications of FCAS and GCAP, what they want to achieve at what price, and see what they can do better together.”
He stopped short of suggesting that the rival jet projects might be merged but said there was scope for them to use the same engines, sensors and so-called combat-cloud technology, including fleets of battle drones potentially controlled from a fighter’s cockpit.
Mr Faury said governments could ill afford to squander defence budgets as Donald Trump takes office and increases pressure on Europe to raise military spending.
He said: “There is complexity and there is uncertainty. The US is challenging Nato partners on their contribution, and that’s more relevant than ever with the conflict in Ukraine.
“The US is looking more and more to the West and less to the East, so Europe has to take its own destiny and future more into its own hands than in the past.”
The Airbus boss said that governments must combine procurement spending for future projects if the region is to maintain an independent defence industry.
He said: “What Europe needs to do is first come together and create programmes at scale, second spend more money, and third, buy from Europe. Ideally you would like everybody to contribute to one system that could be standardised to all players.”