C. IMPROVE INDUSTRIAL COOPERATION
International cooperation between defence companies remains a significant challenge because they are more used to working in a national framework. However, in three years of negotiations on the FCAS, significant progress has been made in the matter between French and German manufacturers, the best example being the collaboration now under way between Dassault and Airbus.
Careful not to repeat the errors that led to great difficulties in previous international programmes, the DGA, the leader on the FCAS project, has for the moment been successful in imposing "vertical" steering of the various pillars , with a clearly identified prime contractor and main partner in charge of orchestrating subcontractors' contributions. We must welcome this desire to learn the lessons from past failures as well as the scale of the efforts made since mid-2017.
However, the programme is only just beginning . For each pillar, the negotiations between governments and between manufacturers were difficult. Additionally, it is tempting for manufacturers to pressure politicians to increase their workload beyond what is coherent from a precisely industrial point of view. To this end, they may evoke a return of manufacturing to the country with the jobs that come with it, as well as catching up technologically and gaining skills in certain fields key to military and civilian aviation.
1. The "geographic return" principle and the "best athlete" principle
As the programme develops, the consequences for each of the participating countries of applying the "best athlete" principle will be felt . There will be difficult discussions when it comes to deciding whether such and such a part of the combat aircraft or the remote carriers will be built in France, Germany or Spain. For example, in certain fields Dassault and Safran may have to stop working with some of their usual French subcontractors and begin working with German or Spanish companies. This is one of the obvious costs of international cooperation.
However, the three countries participating in the programme have, logically, also agreed on a "fair geographic return". Thus, German taxpayers have the right to as many jobs as the French for the same amount invested by their country, as do Spanish taxpayers. However, and this is the leading point of attention for France , it is not certain that there is a sufficient proportion of large foreign companies who will look to work with French small and medium business as there are French system makers who would have preferred foreign small and medium businesses.
Conversely, the principle of fair geographic return itself is a factor of increased costs, industrial inefficiency, and duplicate skills. 32 ( * ) As the DGA representatives highlighted, we should apply this principle of geographic return very flexibly and globally to safeguard the "best athlete" principle .
This situation is further complexified by various players' perceptions: as the Bundestag sees it, Airbus is also "French" , although ADS represents 38,000 jobs in Germany and is the leading supplier to the German army (space, aviation, systems). For phase 1A at least, the bulk of Airbus's activity will be focused in Germany. Additionally, certain players see the FCAS as a French project overall, which would explain the "best" pillars being "awarded" to France. As already discussed, this perception is not correct: the tactical cloud and remote carrier pillars are just as essential to the programme , and Airbus DS is present in nearly all the pillars.
Spain's inclusion after-the-fact 33 ( * ) in the scope of the cooperation has also, logically, resulted in expanding phase 1A and increasing its costs to make room for Spanish manufacturers and bring in new areas for cooperation. This is another reason for the next stage of the FCAS to consist of a major contract of over €1 billion which would test the partners' desire to make a contribution in proportion to the role they wish to have in the project.
Proposal : Support the "Best Athlete" principle (the one who has demonstrated competency is the prime contractor) throughout the duration of the FCAS programme to avoid the errors of the A400M programme, while remaining vigilant of the participation of French small and medium defence companies in the programme.
Proposal: Strengthen Spain's position on the "sensors" pillar.
2. The unresolved issue of industrial property
Establishing rules of industrial property within the framework of the FCAS programme was the subject of long discussions between France and Germany through October 2019. A document with eight principles was signed in December 2019. These are high-level principles to guide manufacturers in their work and ensure the security of information. This is an important issue for France.
Thus, manufacturers will not have to reveal their background, i.e. their own knowledge, which is the heart of their company (MTU's representative used the expression "the crown jewels" during their hearing). Representatives from Airbus as well as Dassault and MTU stated that protecting this "background" was self-evident. On what will be developed jointly, the manufacturer who imagines and designs will own the result, but they can make it available to the other manufacturers as needed so that they have everything needed to support and develop the aircraft without revealing the entire "manufacturing recipe" .
However, certain countries , either trying to catch up or gain industrial power, tend to request the largest share possible of industrial property. In particular, as already discussed, the Bundestag required the German government to define the "key national technologies" for the two projects, the FCAS and the MGCS, and to take measures so that their design, production and availability for Germany were guaranteed. These conditions seem restrictive, especially since the programme is sufficiently technologically rich and its scale sufficiently large for all participating manufacturers to derive significant benefits in terms of know-how and skills without having to deviate from the traditional rules of industrial cooperation.
In any case, Germany made it a condition for moving on to the next phase of the project to draw up a more precise agreement than the one already referred to, which should guarantee a "smooth" sharing of the technologies resulting from the cooperation, in particular as regards the "combat aircraft" pillar led by Dassault. Therefore, it will be necessary to be vigilant in negotiating this new agreement.
Proposal : Protect manufacturers' background in terms of intellectual property. Provide for balanced use of the foreground : ensure that each of the countries participating in the programme can maintain or evolve the FCAS after it is commissioned and ensure an adequate protection of innovations that arise during development.
3. What place is there for ONERA?
We should note an inconsistency in the project's industrial organisation. ONERA, which evidently has very significant skills that could be put to use for a programme such as the FCAS, has not been assigned a place within this programme for the moment , even though its German competitor DLR ( Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt , the German Centre for Aviation and Astronautics), has been awarded an additional subsidy of €106 million by the Bundestag, and the German Defence Ministry awarded it a significant contract within the FCAS. ONERA's skills in military aviation are eminent and renowned. On this issue, we must remember that the negotiations on the breakdown of the various parts of the programme between the two countries' relevant industries and organisations and the trade-offs that implies should not deviate too far from the "best athlete" principle without jeopardising the project's viability.
On 17 June 2020, the armed forces minister responded to a written question from our colleague Martine Berthet that: " We should also note that building the FCAS will, when work has progressed further, call on national expertise and testing capabilities, for France at certain sites of the Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA) and, of course, within the Office national d'études et de recherches spatiales (ONERA - The National Office for Space Research and Studies). It will also mobilise the capabilities of the equivalent counterparts of our German and Spanish partners. In this context, ONERA will be able to play its full role; they will be responsible for proposing a strategy of cooperation with centres in the project's partner countries." The minister also denied that a mission was awarded to the DLR instead of ONERA within the FCAS programme as compensation for the agreement to make French company Safran the prime contractor on the engines and German company MTU its main partner.
The programme's directors are currently mapping the fields where ONERA could have a role to play. ONERA could also provide project management assistance to the DGA to analyse the technological roadmaps submitted by the manufacturers, produce upstream studies on materials, combine its simulation capabilities with those of the DGA and act as a subcontractor for certain manufacturers.
The ministers' statement is just a first step and still includes too many ambiguities that should be clarified as soon as possible so we can confirm that ONERA can participate in the programme in accordance with its level of excellence that is recognised by all . In particular, we must encourage the large manufacturers to use this organisation as a sub-contractor.
Proposal : Integrate ONERA into the FCAS programme at a fair level given its eminent expertise in combat aviation. Encourage manufacturers to rely on ONERA for sub-contracting.
4. Expand the project to new partners once the demonstrator is complete
The issue of expanding to other partners should be discussed given the project's European ambitions.
Of course, distributing tasks has already proven to be complex with three participants . On most pillars, the negotiations to determine the prime contractor and the main partner were long and sometimes fraught with difficulty, causing fears for the future of the programme (particularly for the engine pillar). Additionally, Spain's place still needs to be consolidated, even if there is no doubt as to its desire to participate fully in the project, and there is an agreement to include its manufacturers in the various pillars. Here as well, the memory of the A400M project and its eight participating countries must encourage us to be prudent, as the project's delays and cost overruns can largely be attributed to its excessively complex governance.
However, the FCAS programme undeniably includes a strong European aspect , and it was designed as such from the start. The Franco-German base, now expanded to Spain, should be the embryo of a European strategic autonomy . The project's German military managers, in particular, see the FCAS as more of a European programme than a simple tripartite programme. For them, Sweden and Italy could be the two countries that could bring the most to the FCAS programme, even though these two countries have started to negotiate with the United Kingdom as part of the Tempest programme.
Furthermore, only such a European dimension for the programme can create synergies with the European Union instruments already discussed (PESCO, EDIDP, EDF). Bringing more countries into the programme is also a way to advance European interoperability with European communication standards (see the EcoWar project) and act as a better counterweight to American influence in the future.
However, bringing new countries into the programme must not be allowed to jeopardise its momentum. That is why it seems preferable to defer any entry of a new country until the demonstrator has been completed in 2025/2026. At this time, the programme will have made great progress, and the financial commitments of the three partner countries will have made it stronger, if not irreversible.
Proposal : Expand the FCAS programme to new European countries in its future stages (post-2026). Develop synergies with European instruments of defence (EDIDP, PESCO, EDF), in particular with a view to developing European interoperability standards.
* 32 As the Court of Auditors underscored in its 2010 report on arms programmes: "Even more perverse, the concern of certain countries to see their industry advance paradoxically leads them to bid for work in sectors where their skills still need to be developed".
* 33 Spain is providing funding of €110 million for the first stages from 2020 to 2023. €20 million are payment appropriations voted for 2020 (a portion for the JCS and a portion for phase 1A).