Dassault's Trappier Floats a Super-Rafale Fallback and Confirms an Airbus Eurodrone Rupture in Senate Testimony

Testifying before the Senate's committee on foreign affairs, defence and the armed forces — his first formal appearance since the Franco-German-Spanish Future Combat Air System collapsed as a fighter programme in June — Trappier said Dassault knows how to build the next fighter without Germany or Spain, with Safran for the engine and Thales for the systems. He was explicit that the firm has the competence but not the financial means to do it alone, leaving the door open to an extra-European partner on condition of clear French leadership, and named the Rafale F5 — a “Super-Rafale” — as the plan B.

He was scathing about the pillar the partners agreed to keep. “A cloud is a cloud, and a cloud is water vapour,” he said of SCAF's combat cloud, adding that he could not see how it would survive Germany's wish for its own satellite constellation. And he confirmed that the breach had spread to the separate Eurodrone surveillance programme, on which Dassault handles flight-control systems: “Airbus told us to get out. We don't agree, and so we are in discussions on why we are excluded.” The grievance is bound up with France's April decision to cut acquisition funding for the drone, which shrank Dassault's workshare. Airbus did not directly rebut the characterisation.

SCAF was launched in 2017 by France, Germany and Spain, with Dassault, Airbus and Indra as industrial leads; Trappier had stopped negotiating the next-generation-fighter pillar with Airbus in April, and Berlin and Paris confirmed the split in June. GCAP — Britain, Italy and Japan — is now the only crewed sixth-generation fighter programme still running in Europe.

The proprietary read. Trappier's testimony converts a programme break-up into a national strategy: a French-led fighter, funded with an extra-European partner if need be, with the Rafale F5 as the hedge if the clean sheet slips. As Signal No. 94 noted, the rupture that killed the joint fighter has now reached the drone, and the combat cloud both capitals said they would keep is the first casualty of Dassault's candour. What he did not offer was a costed alternative — the competence is asserted, the money is not, and “water vapour” is easier to say than to replace.