A few days ago, while being questioned by the Senate Committee on Defense and Foreign Affairs as part of the review of the Military Programming Law 2024-2030, the CEO of Dassault Aviation, Eric Trappier, strongly expressed its opposition to other European partners joining the FCAS programme. According to him, the industrial sharing around this program is already sufficiently complex and difficult to balance with Germany and Spain, while new partners would only make the whole even more unstable, with the risk of causing its collapse.
Above all, taking the example of Belgium, Eric Trappier highlighted that this country, which we know is inclined to join the program, had chosen to equip itself with the F-35A, and that the F-35A , to replace its F-16s, and that as such, it had not shown any particular attachment to the emergence of European strategic autonomy in defense matters, as well as to the preservation of the skills of the European defense aeronautics industry.
Obviously, this declaration, moreover very undiplomatic in the mouth of one of the most influential industrialists in Europe, hardly pleased beyond Quiévrain, and many voices, including within the armies, were offended by the position expressed by the French CEO.
It is true that if Brussels arbitrated in favor of Lockheed-Martin's F-35A in 2018, to the detriment of Typhoon, Gripen or Rafale Europeans, the Belgian authorities have made a significant effort, particularly in the field of Defense, to appease the ire of Paris.
Thus, barely a few days after the announcement of the acquisition of the American fighter, Brussels and Paris announced the launch of the CaMo program, through which the land armed forces of the two countries would become perfectly interoperable, in particular through the acquisition for the Belgian Army of 382 Griffon and 60 Jaguar vehicles, all info-valued, delivered from 2025.
A few months later, the Belgian and Dutch Navies entrusted the consortium formed by the Belgian ECA and the French Naval Group with the mandate to design and build 12 large mine warfare vessels, 6 per country, a €2 billion contract. More recently, Brussels once again renewed its commitment to Franco-Belgian interoperability, by ordering 9 CAESAR NG guns, order which will subsequently be increased to 28 motorized guns in July 2022.
From the Belgian point of view, in fact, if indeed preference was given to the F-35 in 2018, a decision largely conditioned by the commitment to interoperability with the Dutch air forces already equipped with the aircraft, the country has shown , since then, all its determination to strengthen the emergence of a European strategic autonomy, and in particular by getting closer to the French defense industry.
Furthermore, and this is far from negligible, the Belgian authorities affirm that they have never received a formal offer from France for the replacement of its F-16s, the only French proposal in this field having been done by Florence Parly then Minister of the Armies, during a renouncement with her Belgian counterpart in May 2018.
Whether it was formalized or not, it is unlikely that the French offer was actually considered by the Belgian government, and especially by the Minister of Defense at the time, Steven Vandeput, a fervent defender of the American apparatus. . This is also why Dassault justifies not having followed up.
However, by putting end to end all the events and decisions that have followed one another since 2018 on the subject of Franco-Belgian defense cooperation, it appears that the situation is probably more nuanced than presented by Eric Trappier, even if the latter has objective reasons to limit the industrial participation around the FCAS program to the 3 initial countries.
Moreover, it is likely that Dassault's firm opposition to the supported requests from Brussels, again reiterated a few days ago by the Belgian Minister of Defense Ludivine Dedonder, to join the FCAS program, could deteriorate the current dynamic in the land and naval domains. In this case, can we get out of this vicious circle self-sustaining by actors sure of their rights?
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