Saab Open to Airbus Defense Partnership as FCAS Next Generation Fighter Program Stalls.

Swedish defense company Saab has said it would consider teaming with Airbus Defence and Space on a new combat aircraft if the Future Combat Air System remains deadlocked. The remarks highlight growing frustration with FCAS and underscore the risk that Europe’s next-generation fighter effort could fragment further.

Saab is keeping its options open as Europe’s flagship next-generation fighter program struggles to move forward. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published December 21, 2025, Saab CEO Michael Johansson said the company would be willing to explore cooperation with Airbus Defence and Space on a new combat aircraft should the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS program fail to break out of its prolonged industrial and technical stalemate. His comments come as disagreements over workshare, system architecture, and leadership roles continue to slow progress on one of Europe’s most ambitious defense projects.
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Airbus Defence and Space represents German and Spanish interests across several pillars of the program, including collaborative systems, combat architecture, and selected mission functions (Picture source: Airbus)

FCAS is not limited to replacing France’s Rafale and Germany’s and Spain’s Eurofighter fleets around 2040. It is structured as a “system of systems” composed of several interdependent pillars. At its core is the New Generation Fighter (NGF), a manned combat aircraft intended to operate in highly contested environments. The NGF is to be supported by unmanned collaborative combat platforms, referred to as Remote Carriers, designed to conduct reconnaissance, electronic warfare, saturation, or strike missions. These elements are to be interconnected through a combat cloud responsible for data fusion, mission coordination, and integration with land, naval, space, and cyber forces.

From an industrial perspective, FCAS relies on a highly sensitive division of responsibilities. Dassault Aviation was designated as prime contractor for the NGF, reflecting its experience as the designer of the Rafale. Airbus Defence and Space represents German and Spanish interests across several pillars of the program, including collaborative systems, combat architecture, and selected mission functions. Safran and MTU are tasked with joint development of the propulsion system, while Thales, Indra, and Airbus are involved in sensors and avionics. Additional industrial players contribute to connectivity, effectors, and support systems.

This allocation of roles has become the central point of contention. Since 2021, Airbus has challenged the governance model proposed by Dassault for the NGF, arguing that the “best athlete” principle restricts access to critical technologies for the German industrial base. Dassault, in turn, maintains that the development of a next-generation combat aircraft requires a clearly identified industrial authority responsible for overall architecture, technical decisions, and performance accountability. These disagreements have delayed the transition to demonstration phases intended to validate key technologies such as low observability, propulsion, mission systems, and human-machine integration.

In this context, Johansson’s comments carry broader implications. Asked by the FAZ about a possible partnership with Airbus Defence in the event FCAS were abandoned, he stated that Saab possesses the capabilities required to develop a next-generation fighter aircraft. He emphasized, however, that any cooperation would depend on maintaining core industrial competencies and technological independence, a concern that mirrors several of the issues currently affecting FCAS.

Johansson also outlined a phased approach to future air combat development. He estimated that designing a fully new manned fighter would require approximately ten years, with operational entry not expected before the late 2030s. By contrast, he identified unmanned capabilities as a more immediate priority. Collaborative combat drones, which could be fielded within four to five years, are seen as complementary assets to existing platforms such as the Gripen and the Eurofighter. Saab and Airbus Defence are already engaged in preliminary discussions in this area, although these remain at an early, exploratory stage.

This perspective highlights one of FCAS’s structural challenges: the difficulty of aligning priorities among the manned aircraft, unmanned systems, combat cloud, and sensor architecture. While Saab advocates an incremental development path focused on deployable technological building blocks, FCAS remains organized around a comprehensive and tightly integrated architecture that has proven difficult to govern and synchronize among partners.

As Sweden continues national studies on a future air combat system led by Saab, the prospect of a German-Swedish industrial framework has emerged as a potential alternative for Berlin. Such an option would rest on a narrower industrial structure than FCAS, but it would also represent a departure from a program conceived as a cornerstone of European strategic autonomy. Whether European governments are prepared to reconsider this approach remains an open question, as FCAS continues to face unresolved technical, industrial, and governance challenges.