Dassault is a French aerospace company that builds the Rafale fighter jet, which carries part of France's nuclear deterrent. It leads the construction of the New Generation Fighter (NGF) under the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), a Franco-German-Spanish project conceived in 2017.
Its chief executive, Eric Trappier, is outspoken about the project's governance, objecting to equal decision-making with Airbus, which represents both Germany and Spain: "I will not accept three people sitting around a table deciding on all the technical aspects required to fly a high-performance aircraft." Mr Trappier says Dassault can go it alone on a next-generation fighter if necessary.
By February 2026 the FCAS project was widely described as near collapse. Dassault refuses to surrender its intellectual property to Airbus, and other big French firms involved are behaving similarly. Germany is ready to walk; France pulled out of a separate €7bn drone programme involving Airbus, Dassault and Italy's Leonardo in October 2025. The only part of FCAS likely to survive is the "combat cloud" as a discrete project.
Garbage In -- Gospel Out.