Belgium will be admitted as an observer country in the complex Future Air Combat System (SCAF) program, developed by France, Germany and Spain, Emmanuel Macron said on Monday June 19. “It’s a major development.estimated the Head of State, closing a ministerial conference on the anti-aircraft defense of Europe. This enlargement will further anchor this project in Europe at the heart of tomorrow’s air defense. »
The SCAF should enter service by 2040, but it has already experienced many delays. Launched in 2017 to replace the French Rafale fighter jets and German and Spanish Eurofighter, the project was the subject of a long blockage last year due to friction between the French Dassault Aviation and the European giant Airbus, pillars of this project supported by the three countries.
This blockage ended on 1er December 2022 after intense political pressure, with the conclusion of an agreement setting out the division of labor for this vast industrial programme. At the end of May, the boss of Dassault Aviation, Eric Trappier, said he was opposed to extending the program to other countries, fearing new difficulties in sharing tasks between manufacturers.
The French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, had for his part deemed it necessary to ” ask yourself a question (…) provided it is of industrial and military interest”. He had justified it in particular by the need to reduce the costs of a project estimated at around 100 billion euros, according to experts.
Belgium will retain this observer status “initially since we are in a relatively complex phase” of design and production which does not lend itself to more direct participation, specified the Elysée.
Joint purchase of Mistral surface-to-air missiles
Emmanuel Macron also announced on Monday that France, Estonia, Hungary, Belgium and Cyprus would jointly purchase Mistral short-range surface-to-air missiles. “It is a very good example of sovereign cooperation by Europeans on a range which is completely relevant and which was not sufficiently covered”he defended.
The five countries have signed a letter of intent which relates to the acquisition of “several hundred Mistral missiles”specified a presidential adviser, underlining that it was about a “first case of joint purchase of this type of equipment”. Entering service in 1988 within the French army, the Mistral, which is developed by the European armament group MBDA, can reach targets located up to 6 kilometers away.
Paris organized this conference to try to harmonize European positions while Berlin launched, in October, a “European Air Shield Initiative” (Euro Sky Shield), bringing together today seventeen European countries but not France, nor Italy, nor Poland, and which provides for the purchase of German, American and Israeli equipment.
This project intends to rely on the German IRIS-T anti-aircraft systems for the short range, American Patriot for the medium range and American-Israeli Arrow-3 for the long range. France, for its part, prefers to continue to bet on its own medium-range surface-to-air defense system SAMP/T Mamba and insists on the problems posed by the German project.