France and Germany have decided to join forces to create a new next generation multipurpose combat aircraft. Last Thursday, April 12, 2018, a meeting of the defense ministers of the two countries took place in the capital of Germany, after which the first comments appeared about the imminent start of work on the creation of a new combat aircraft. Although the development of pan-European models of military equipment is traditionally slow to take the creation of the same fourth-generation Eurofighter Typhoon fighter, the development of a new aircraft always attracts attention, especially when you consider the fact that the British and French are going to leap a generation. The fighter announced by them will belong directly to the sixth generation of combat vehicles.
There is no reason to doubt that the Europeans will be able to create a completely competitive combat aircraft of a new generation. The only really interesting question at the moment is by what date they will be able to create a new combat vehicle. For example, work on a promising fourth-generation European fighter began in Europe in the late 1970s. In 1986, Eurofighter GmbH was founded, which became a consortium of the Italian company Alenia Aeronautica, British BAE Systems, and the European aerospace corporation EADS (today it is Airbus Group). The first flight of their new fighter took place in 1994, and the serial production of the aircraft and the start of operation of the new combat vehicle took place in 2003.
Today European countries (excluding Russia) produce three types of 4th generation fighters: Eurofighter Typhoon (Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy), Gripen (Sweden) and Rafale (France). At the same time, the EU openly says that the development and production of a new generation fighter will be too expensive a step for each individual state, so they decided to develop a new combat aircraft jointly.
All of the above aircraft have export potential. At the same time, the number of built Eurofighter Typhoon fighters exceeded 500 units back in April 2017, when the 500th aircraft was rolled out, which was transferred to the Italian Air Force (as of February 2018, the number of aircraft produced exceeds 533 copies). This fighter is in service with the Air Forces of Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Austria, Saudi Arabia. Contracts for the supply to Qatar, Kuwait and Oman have been signed. It is safe to say that European countries today do not have any special problems with the joint production of a 4th generation fighter and its export potential.
The fact that Germany and France were thinking about creating a promising combat aircraft became known last year. In July 2017, during a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, this was announced for the first time. It is assumed that the promising European combat aircraft will replace the 4th generation fighters Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale.
But the timing of the appearance of the new fighter is called very distant. According to a rough estimate, the first flight of the new fighter will take place no earlier than 2040. At the same time, it is assumed that the new aircraft will not belong to the fifth generation aircraft, but immediately to the sixth generation. It is known that all the leading European aircraft-building concerns and manufacturers of various aviation equipment are included in the project to create an aircraft, among them: Airbus, Dassault Aviation, MBDA, Safran, Thales.
In the future, the project for creating a new fighter should become multilateral, such as the Eurofighter Typhoon project was, but British firms have not yet been officially named. At the same time, the initiators of the work emphasize that in the future they are ready to expand the list of program participants to “strengthen the base” of the project. At the same time, at this stage, Berlin and Paris are signaling that they are not ready to allow significant influence on the project, its ideology and the technical appearance of the machine of specialists from third countries, but in the future they are ready to attend to the creation of launch markets for a new aircraft in the Air Force "priority partners of the program ".
The announced project is not the first attempt by European states to create a promising sixth generation combined-arms aircraft. What the French today refer to as the Système de Combat Aérien du Futur was formerly called the Future Combat Air System. It was about the development of a promising aviation combat complex, which was supposed to replace the Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale aircraft. France and Great Britain acted as partners in the project, and the volume of costs at the first stage of the program implementation was estimated at $ 2 billion.
Eurofighter Typhoon
Airbus presented the FCAS program in 2017. This program included the development of a whole family of military aviation equipment - in addition to the fighter itself, these were unmanned aerial vehicles, refueling aircraft, a flying command center, and orbital satellites. The main qualities that should have distinguished the sixth generation aircraft were innovative types and weapons systems (including laser combat systems), the invisibility of aircraft for radars, as well as the ability to use the most remote control over the aircraft (implementation of an unmanned control model). It is planned that the agreement on the launch of the joint European program will be signed by the end of April 2018, and eventually other European countries will be able to join it.
It is noteworthy that France did not formally abandon the joint project with Great Britain, announcing its transfer to a "parallel process", stressing that work in this direction could be useful. It should be noted that since the turn of the 2000s and 2010s, France has been actively working in the military-political field, having formalized a separate bilateral military alliance with Great Britain (this caused discontent in Germany, where they used to see the political axis Berlin- Paris).
At the same time, Brexit somewhat downgraded the prospects for the implementation of Franco-British projects in the aircraft industry, although it is still too early to write them off. France is trying to diversify its risks, while Germany has less choice. Berlin is currently seriously occupied with the question of how to replace the Tornado fighter-bombers, which are due to withdraw from the Luftwaffe in the early 2020s. It is planned to change them either to a new batch of fourth-generation fighters Eurofighter Typhoon (this decision is lobbied by politicians and industry) or to fifth-generation F-35 fighters purchased in the United States (the German military insists on this, which has already caused a loud scandal in Berlin with threats of resignation) …
The announced attempt to create a new fighter looks like another attempt to implement the Eurofighter project, but with a new set of program participants. However, the last time, although the aircraft was created and recognized as quite successful, it did not become a single European fighter. Then it was France who quarreled with the members of the concern. The result was the emergence of the British-German-Italian-Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon, and Paris presented its own Dassault Rafale. Both aircraft compete with each other on the international market, reducing each other's share, and the appearance of two different fighters has increased their cost in serial production (taking into account the costs of their development).
Dassault Rafale
This time, the UK will most likely not be included in the developer pool. True, London has a military-technical choice. Firstly, Great Britain is already purchasing fifth-generation F-35B fighters from the United States, and secondly, a country that is Washington's closest ally can count on some preferences under the program to create a sixth-generation American combat aircraft. Earlier, London announced that it would acquire 138 F-35B fifth-generation multipurpose fighters from the United States for the RAF and the Royal Navy. In particular, it is the F-35B fighters with short takeoff and vertical landing capabilities that will become the main striking force of the two newest British aircraft carriers of the Queen Elizabeth class.
The capabilities of the sixth generation fighters
Fifth-generation fighters with their advanced information systems, cruising supersonic flight speed, low radar signature and integrated radio-technical systems had not yet really mastered the sky when the sixth generation aircraft loomed on the horizon. Today, for the most part, one can only guess about their appearance and features. No details about the promising fighter being developed by Germany and France are also still unknown.
Therefore, about the tactical and technical capabilities, as well as the appearance of the new aircraft, we can only speak approximately. However, certain areas of development of military aviation technology can be identified already now. It is absolutely possible to say that the aircraft will be created both in manned and unmanned versions; the fighter can be piloted optionally from the ground. A direct continuation of this feature is the possibility of including an aircraft in a combat network: when aircraft are united in "flocks" operating in a single information space. It is also planned that manned aircraft will be able to "drive" robots.
New Fighter as a key element of the Future Combat Air System, a concept from Airbus
Also, the features of the sixth generation machines include the presence of hypersonic flight speed and super-maneuverability. To these features, Vladimir Mikhailov, the head of the Directorate of Military Aviation Programs of the UAC, added in June 2016 the widespread use of composite materials. Of course, the new combat vehicle will have to be multifunctional and have improved stealth technologies, extreme stealth (in radar and thermal ranges) should become one of the main features of the new aircraft.
Perhaps the sixth generation fighters will become two-medium, that is, they will be able to operate equally effectively in the atmosphere and in near space. Also, the features of promising aircraft include the ability to change shape in flight and the use of "smart materials". Separately, one can single out weapons, in which the appearance of directional weapons is predicted. At the very least, we are talking about the appearance of onboard combat lasers and powerful generators of electromagnetic radiation that can hit the onboard equipment of enemy aircraft.
