Airbus comfortable with industrial base changes if FCAS and Tempest merge
A FCAS next generation fighter mock-up on display at the Paris Air Show 2019. (Photo: Tim Martin)
Despite not discussing different industrial scenarios with BAE Systems should FCAS and Tempest merge, Airbus has stated it will overcome any changes should the two programmes ever become one.
Airbus has said it foresees no industrial issues or complications if two competing European sixth-generation fighter programmes merge into one.
Defence analysts have often suggested that such a scenario could emerge, but until recently senior figures associated with each effort tended to sidestep the issue.
On 23 November, however, Gen Luca Goretti, Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force, told a defence committee that ‘investing huge financial resources’ in two separate programmes would be ‘unthinkable’ and that they would become a single effort in the future, according to Reuters.
‘It was an interesting statement [from Goretti] and probably conventional wisdom would
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