France-Germany-Spain Future Combat Air System (FCAS / SCAF / FSAC)

H_K said:
« European level » decisions typically mean every country gets a veto. ie. Germany gets to veto French exports, which is a dealbreaker.

The problem here is Germany is walking back on prior commitments that were made at the very start of the program. Perhaps « majority rule » could be a viable compromise, but that would mean Germany would have to be OK if France + Spain vote together.
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I don't see Germany being okay with that.

And frankly, I think France needs to kick Germany out of the team for this. "You agreed to the following terms when this project first started. Now you're changing the terms? No. Build your own 6th gen fighter."
 
H_K said:
« European level » decisions typically mean every country gets a veto. ie. Germany gets to veto French exports, which is a dealbreaker.
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The big question would be how is the work split by export. Also what if spain wants to export it? doesnt make mutch sense for all to be able to export it.
H_K said:
The problem here is Germany is walking back on prior commitments that were made at the very start of the program. Perhaps « majority rule » could be a viable compromise, but that would mean Germany would have to be OK if France + Spain vote together.
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My guess would also be for voting where the the side with more votes win. With 3 countries there allways is a winner if all have to vote.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I don't see Germany being okay with that.
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Compromise for mgcs?
Scott Kenny said:
And frankly, I think France needs to kick Germany out of the team for this. "You agreed to the following terms when this project first started. Now you're changing the terms? No. Build your own 6th gen fighter."
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Let them try that and hurt themselve as mutch as the rest.
 
Scott Kenny said:
And frankly, I think France needs to kick Germany out of the team for this. "You agreed to the following terms when this project first started. Now you're changing the terms? No. Build your own 6th gen fighter."
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Further, since how many years are France and Germany already talking about export rights an conditions?
And how long did it take to make a decision to order new equipment after 24. Feb. 2022 for Germany?

Scott Kenny said:
Then someone failed to pay attention to what France was wanting to buy EF for!
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So far I remember the split between France and Eurofighter Consortium cam from a different opinion about leadership and not from a carrier requirement.
 
I would like to see France build a new carrier alongside a navalized variant of the SCAF. Also I would like to see two carriers instead of one.
 
Scott Kenny said:
France has the national will to build a carrier capable 6th gen fighter. (or 5.5gen, take your pick).

That means they will find the money to fun it.
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They will. But it could (and probaly will) hurt them and in general the relationship between the 2.
 
So what aircraft would go onto the smaller carriers in that situation kqcke for you? A single engined smaller cheeper SCAF variant? That I would like to see.
 
FighterJock said:
So what aircraft would go onto the smaller carriers in that situation kqcke for you? A single engined smaller cheeper SCAF variant? That I would like to see.
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That wouldn't be a variant though, that would be a wholly new aircraft. And in that case, in 2040s, it would make more sense to make it unmanned to get the most out of its potential.
 
FighterJock said:
So what aircraft would go onto the smaller carriers in that situation kqcke for you? A single engined smaller cheeper SCAF variant? That I would like to see.
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Multiple Options. Maybe ucav's to free up the prime Carrier or even normal scaf jets just less of them. Single jet would also be possible but mutch more expensive
 
I did not think of that by making the smaller cheeper SCAF a UCAV, by then the technology around the unmanned fighters would be much better than today's equivalents.
 
kqcke for you said:
They will. But it could (and probaly will) hurt them and in general the relationship between the 2.
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Bluntly, Germany has revealed itself to be untrustworthy in negotiations.

kqcke for you said:
I would love to see 2 Pang and maybe 2-3 smaller. But thats to mutch for them alone i think.
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The ideal would be 3 PANGs and anything smaller would be Mistral LHDs (perhaps even fitted with an angled deck and a catapult or two)
 
FighterJock said:
I did not think of that by making the smaller cheeper SCAF a UCAV, by then the technology around the unmanned fighters would be much better than today's equivalents.
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No i meant a UCAV which you in normal way use with scaf but in this case as its own fighter like the turks kinda wanne do. Or simply use scaf but way less jets per carrier.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Bluntly, Germany has revealed itself to be untrustworthy in negotiations.
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For me both are at wrong for MGCS and SCAF.
But like i said it will hurt if they do and i don't believe they will do it. But nobody knows for sure....
Scott Kenny said:
The ideal would be 3 PANGs and anything smaller would be Mistral LHDs (perhaps even fitted with an angled deck and a catapult or two)
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Yeah but i heard atleast that a second could be on the table and i believe 2 are more realistic than 3.
 
H_K said:
The problem here is Germany is walking back on prior commitments that were made at the very start of the program.
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Was this actually what was written down and in what enforceable document? There's a lot of speculation here.

Regardless of a "veto" or not, Germany (or another country) can still effectively stop exports as per Eurofighter where some manufacturers in country simply refuse to release critical parts - and it would takes ages/costs to establish a secondary supplier.

This is always a risk as soon as you diverge from a purely national programme
 
red admiral said:
Was this actually what was written down and in what enforceable document? There's a lot of speculation here.

Regardless of a "veto" or not, Germany (or another country) can still effectively stop exports as per Eurofighter where some manufacturers in country simply refuse to release critical parts - and it would takes ages/costs to establish a secondary supplier.

This is always a risk as soon as you diverge from a purely national programme
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This is another point.
 
red admiral said:
Was this actually what was written down and in what enforceable document? There's a lot of speculation here
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Yes. The Germans are walking back on a signed agreement and knowingly putting the entire program at risk.

www.defense-aerospace.com

French-German Deal on Arms Exports Advances FCAS and MGCS Programs

PARIS --- Meeting in Toulouse on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel significantly advanced their next...
www.defense-aerospace.com www.defense-aerospace.com

Oct. 17, 2019​

Meeting in Toulouse on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel significantly advanced their next generation of weapons by agreeing new rules governing the export of jointly-produced weapons.

Ending years of controversy, the two leaders on Wednesday signed a “legally binding agreement” to automatically agree to the export by the other country of jointly-developed weapons, which according to a note by the French presidency “is the condition for the success of joint projects such as the tank and the aircraft of the future.”
 
H_K said:
Yes. The Germans are walking back on a signed agreement and knowingly putting the entire program at risk.

www.defense-aerospace.com

French-German Deal on Arms Exports Advances FCAS and MGCS Programs

PARIS --- Meeting in Toulouse on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel significantly advanced their next...
www.defense-aerospace.com www.defense-aerospace.com

Oct. 17, 2019​

Meeting in Toulouse on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel significantly advanced their next generation of weapons by agreeing new rules governing the export of jointly-produced weapons.

Ending years of controversy, the two leaders on Wednesday signed a “legally binding agreement” to automatically agree to the export by the other country of jointly-developed weapons, which according to a note by the French presidency “is the condition for the success of joint projects such as the tank and the aircraft of the future.”
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Where do they walk back? They just want the whole export deal on a european level (which leaves a lot of interpretation) but this could just mean they want to "unite" so not all go solo on exports. After all why should all there be able to export it if they could just do it together as one seller.
 
H_K said:
Yes. The Germans are walking back on a signed agreement and knowingly putting the entire program at risk.
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It's pretty unclear that that was ratified, and from the details reported may not be inconsistent with the recent report. It's very difficult to understand these things without having the actual text.

I think I'd take the approach that nothing is really agreed on collaborative programmes until the main development and production contract is signed
 
@red admiral I agree the details are spotty (at least in English) and I’m not well versed enough in the German political system to understand what it takes to ratify.

But the general point still stands that from the very beginning the agreement was that both countries would sign a legally binding export framework as a precondition to continuing further work, and this agreement would act as an umbrella over all joint programs. Four years on and the Germans are either trying to renegotiate or are walking away from this both in spirit and in practice.
 
H_K said:
But the general point still stands that from the very beginning the agreement was that both countries would sign a legally binding export framework as a precondition to continuing further work, and this agreement would act as an umbrella over all joint programs. Four years on and the Germans are either trying to renegotiate or are walking away from this both in spirit and in practice.
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OK lets say thats true. What would they get out of this? They know france wont back down and they can't get a better position anyway. They need france for the jet while france doesnt need Germany. So they can't win anything from this so why would they do just that? Like R. Admiral or i said there is a lot of context we dont have to make mutch out of this.
 
kqcke for you said:
What would they get out of this? They know france wont back down and they can't get a better position anyway. They need france for the jet while france doesnt need Germany. So they can't win anything from this so why would they do just that?
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Has Germany really the intention to build the FCAS?

I guess for those who doesn't know the history of Germany, doesn't watch the German TV, who is visiting who and make statements, it will be hard to understand the Germans..
 
Germany is surrounded by countries known for their high degree of rigorous selection of material and all but two have made the choice of F-35 to defend their skies...

(clockwise) Luxembourg, Belgium Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Czechia, Switzerland.

In effect, German skies will undoubtedly be better guarded with its neighbors Lightings awesome contribution.
 
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Yeah I had heard similar recently, Dassault had been assigned and completed a sub-review as part of the Preliminary Design Review but was refusing to submit its work to the lead contractor Airbus, so the whole Preliminary Design Review was now stalled and Airbus may be forced to repeat the work Dassault has done to get things moving again. Apparently Dassault considers the work proprietary and commercially sensitive so its saying it wont share it with a commercial rival.
 
WatcherZero said:
Yeah I had heard similar recently, Dassault had been assigned and completed a sub-review as part of the Preliminary Design Review but was refusing to submit its work to the lead contractor Airbus, so the whole Preliminary Design Review was now stalled and Airbus may be forced to repeat the work Dassault has done to get things moving again. Apparently Dassault considers the work proprietary and commercially sensitive so its saying it wont share it with a commercial rival.
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Dassault winning friends again, I see.

If they were contracted for that, they either have to deliver or not get paid. Or return whatever money they were paid in advance, though that usually takes a lawsuit.
 
Sadly, French Judiciary system is not what we have in the US. Although it's improving lately, It is still disfunctional to the point that administrative ruling prevails. (yeah, that's what you've just read).

So, Dassault behavior is well safeguarded if what's written above is true (didn't cross check).
 
Scott Kenny said:
If they were contracted for that, they either have to deliver or not get paid. Or return whatever money they were paid in advance, though that usually takes a lawsuit
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Devil may be in the details as Dassault is providing the FCS, which is mostly software. Did Airbus contract for a functioning flight control system or for all the underlying proprietary technology and source code?

Dassault has in the past been very explicit that there’s a red line in any partnership and that it won’t share its “know how”, which I understand includes its development methods and source code. So while it must deliver a working product to Airbus’ specs, I wonder if they are contractually obliged to share the details of the software’s workings under the hood… that could be an obvious source of disagreements.

Would be interesting to know how other programs function… Eurofighter, NH90, F-35, 787 etc. For example, does Boeing have access to the source code of the 787’s flight control system, or is that proprietary to Honeywell? Does Airbus have access to the source code of the A400M’s FADEC or is that proprietary to Europrop? (Or perhaps BAE Systems as AFAIK they were actually responsible for the TP400 FADEC) etc.
 
I believe it was a desktop validation study that they were assigned and completed, but they would only share their study conclusions, not their 'working out'. Arguably without the ability to review their maths there's no way to know if the conclusions are properly derived or not which makes the work essentially worthless as its quality can not be reviewed. The topic of the study wasn't shared, just the anecdote on their working relationship.

(It could have been a DO-178C software review or it could have been a physics model computer validation, I dont know)
 
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H_K said:
Would be interesting to know how other programs function… Eurofighter, NH90, F-35, 787 etc. For example, does Boeing have access to the source code of the 787’s flight control system, or is that proprietary to Honeywell? Does Airbus have access to the source code of the A400M’s FADEC or is that proprietary to Europrop? (Or perhaps BAE Systems as AFAIK they were actually responsible for the TP400 FADEC) etc.
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Can't speak for 787, but for 777* we had Boeing engineers embedded in the team, not many, just a couple. IIRC they were operating in a QA role. They'd likely have full access to the code in that case, though I don't know if the source code was a deliverable or not. We were implementing a Boeing requirement - control laws, so they'd have a fair idea what the code said anyway. Even stuff like the GMAv developed redundancy management system, they'd need the details of how it works to go into the flight manuals. FAA were a bit hands off**, so I don't know if they were digging into the software or not.

* Might have been 757 RT, which was a proof of concept, my memory's a bit hazy on where one stopped and the other began, as we moved straight from one to the other.

** By Eurofighter standards, ridiculously hands off.

For Eurofighter, we had fully integrated teams. There was an initial plan to farm work packages out to the Italians and Spanish, but that didn't work, so we ended up with one team in Ottobrunn interfacing with Eurofighter Gmbh and doing requirements and top level design and the main team in Rochester doing hardware, software and testing, people from all four partners in each team, so the visibility to the full software build would be there for each partner company, and our customer, Eurofighter Gmbh, was just another combination of the same partner companies. We also had regular visits from the National Airworthiness Authorities, those usually meant me sitting at my computer for a week with an NAA software QA guy looking over my shoulder saying "Right, show me the evidence that change request XYZ was implemented". I imagine customer QA was also embedded into those reviews, but don't actually recall.

I'd presume the German NAA QA guys came from WTD 61 at Manching, and they're going to want the same kind of access they had on Eurofighter for FCAS, because they're not going to sign off something they don't have full visibility into - especially not with MCAS on everyone's minds. This isn't just 'we're used to this level of access', it's getting towards 'As an engineer I'm legally required to have had access to this in order to be able to sign it off'.

Remember what happened to the UK Chinook HC3s - the UK's technical assessment guys didn't have the access to certify the cockpit software and refused to do so, and we ended up doing a nose-job on them to stick an HC2 cockpit on the HC3 fuselages.
 
H_K said:
Devil may be in the details as Dassault is providing the FCS, which is mostly software. Did Airbus contract for a functioning flight control system or for all the underlying proprietary technology and source code?

Dassault has in the past been very explicit that there’s a red line in any partnership and that it won’t share its “know how”, which I understand includes its development methods and source code. So while it must deliver a working product to Airbus’ specs, I wonder if they are contractually obliged to share the details of the software’s workings under the hood… that could be an obvious source of disagreements.
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And I'm somewhat in agreement with that. Specific parts are _your skills_ and you don't necessarily want to teach others how to do what you do without getting paid for that.



WatcherZero said:
I believe it was a desktop validation study that they were assigned and completed, but they would only share their study conclusions, not their 'working out'. Arguably without the ability to review their maths there's no way to know if the conclusions are properly derived or not which makes the work essentially worthless as its quality can not be reviewed. The topic of the study wasn't shared, just the anecdote on their working relationship.

(It could have been a DO-178C software review or it could have been a physics model computer validation, I dont know)
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Ah, if you won't show your work you won't get any credit.

I really hope that FCAS corporate refuses to pay Dassault for this, because if they won't show their work the analysis itself cannot be verified.


DWG said:
For Eurofighter, we had fully integrated teams. There was an initial plan to farm work packages out to the Italians and Spanish, but that didn't work, so we ended up with one team in Ottobrunn interfacing with Eurofighter Gmbh and doing requirements and top level design and the main team in Rochester doing hardware, software and testing, people from all four partners in each team, so the visibility to the full software build would be there for each partner company, and our customer, Eurofighter Gmbh, was just another combination of the same partner companies. We also had regular visits from the National Airworthiness Authorities, those usually meant me sitting at my computer for a week with an NAA software QA guy looking over my shoulder saying "Right, show me the evidence that change request XYZ was implemented". I imagine customer QA was also embedded into those reviews, but don't actually recall.
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That sounds like all sorts of "fun".

For values of "fun" equal to "root canal without anesthetic"

Hopefully the code was heavily, heavily documented with notes about "this change is due to change request XYZ"!


DWG said:
I'd presume the German NAA QA guys came from WTD 61 at Manching, and they're going to want the same kind of access they had on Eurofighter for FCAS, because they're not going to sign off something they don't have full visibility into - especially not with MCAS on everyone's minds. This isn't just 'we're used to this level of access', it's getting towards 'As an engineer I'm legally required to have had access to this in order to be able to sign it off'.
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And that's what it seems like FCAS and Dassault are butting heads over.
 

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