The Future Combat Air System ended on 8 June 2026. Nine years after its announcement by Chancellor Merkel and President Macron, Bundeskanzler Merz suggested to Macron that further pursuit was not advisable. Paris confirmed this several hours later.
The project had been framed as a hundred-billion-euro programme to build a shared successor to the Eurofighter and the Rafale. Its final obstacle was the question of who would lead it. Dassault sought primary direction. Airbus declined a junior arrangement.
The aircraft will not be built. A Combat Cloud — the network layer connecting aircraft, drones and sensors — will continue under a separate agreement.
Two days later, the Internationale Luft- und Raumfahrtausstellung opened in Berlin. Chancellor Merz announced a Luftfahrtstrategie. Civil aviation, which recorded a fifty percent decline in domestic passenger connections against 2019, received five hundred million euros in cost relief. Industry associations described this as insufficiently concrete. Military space spending was set at thirty-five billion euros.
On the third day, eight companies announced Team Gen 6 at the ILA. The group intends to develop a Eurofighter successor, connecting manned aircraft with unmanned systems in a military data network. Participation by other European partners is planned. "We do not intend a German solo run," the group's statement said.
Michael Schöllhorn, head of Airbus Defence and Space, said the group must now "press the accelerator." He noted that the week's earlier cancellation had already cost some time.
In May, Schöllhorn had described the German aerospace sector's record sixty-two billion euro revenue as "strategically relevant — economically, technologically, and security-politically."
The Combat Cloud continues. Aircraft to follow.