For the Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe, the FCAS and Tempest programs would benefit from coming closer

There are sentences which, on their own, perfectly sum up a given situation. And when interviewed by the American Defense News site, Lt General Ingo Gerhartz, Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe, says he hopes that the FCAS programs which bring together Germany, France and Spain, and Tempest, led by Great Britain with the participation of Italy and Sweden, will come together, in straight from NATO's SACEUR statements a few days ago, he is only saying out loud what many German officials are thinking quietly, namely that cooperation with Great Britain and Italy, which notably gave rise to the Panavia Tornado then the Eurofighter Typhoon, is much more natural and productive for Berlin than cooperation with Paris, perceived by many Germans as unbalanced and unsuited to the very needs of Germany. And when he adds that the Tempest program brings together all the criteria and all the capabilities expected beyond 2040 by the Luftwaffe, namely a hyper-connected platform capable of implementing drones in a digital environment, he does not than pushing down a door that is already wide open, namely that Germany's needs are much closer to those of Great Britain than to those of France.

Indeed, for the Luftwaffe, which, let us remember, will soon acquire 45 F / A 18 Super Hornets and E / A 18G Growler of electronic warfare for deep strike missions, removal of anti-aircraft defenses and participation in the NATO deterrence mission, the FCAS must above all produce a successor to the Typhoon, namely an aircraft whose main mission is air superiority and interception. For France, on the other hand, it is a question of replacing the Rafale across the entire spectrum of its air missions, namely air superiority, close air support, penetration and suppression of enemy defenses, reconnaissance but also nuclear strikes, while potentially being embarked on board the carrier's successor -Charles de Gaulle nuclear planes. To summarize synthetically, where the Luftwaffe expects from the FCAS an aircraft 70% dedicated to air superiority, and 30% to strike and related missions, i.e. approximately the same profile as the Tempest, France expects an aircraft to 25% dedicated to air superiority, 25% to strikes and ancillary missions, 25% to long-range strategic nuclear strikes, and 25% to embarked naval missions, i.e. an overlap rate of only 50% between the two notebooks charges.

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