Tony Osborne Dassault is proposing the Falcon 10X maritime patroller as the Atlantique replacement, after Germany opts for the P-8.
Tony Osborne
Germany’s purchase of the P-8 has caused ripples in its defense relationship with France and the two country’s plans to strengthen European defense collaboration. Credit: Boeing
A Franco-German collaboration to develop a maritime patrol aircraft for the 2030s is on the rocks following Berlin’s decision to purchase Boeing’s P-8 Poseidon.
Germany insists it is “committed” to the Maritime Airborne Warfare System (MAWS) partnership with France for the joint development of a future maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) for the 2030s, describing the Poseidon purchase as fulfilling an interim need.
However, Paris appears to be less certain. French aviation industry officials have suggested that Berlin’s €1.1 billion ($1.3 billion) Foreign Military Sales (FMS) contract signed with Washington at the end of June for P-8s is incompatible with the two-nation MAWS plan.
French defense officials have yet to state whether the MAWS partnership is officially over, but an undercurrent of unhappy newspaper headlines and noises from French industry certainly seems to suggest as much. Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier described the MAWS initiative as a “failure” as he presented the company’s second-quarter earnings results on July 22.
“Discussions had started, without Dassault, for a future maritime patrol aircraft,” he said. “Then Germany unilaterally decided to buy Boeing P-8s.”
The MAWS initiative came out of the same 2017 Franco-German Ministerial Council—attended by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel—that triggered the launch of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program, which has now secured billions in funding from the participating nations, including Spain, for a demonstration program.
MAWS never attracted quite the same level of attention as the FCAS, but the program did lead to a series of initial studies aimed at providing an MPA that could replace France’s fleet of Dassault Atlantique 2s and Germany’s Lockheed P-3 Orions. MAWS could have also potentially fulfilled a NATO requirement for developing a new-generation Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft. Both France and Germany were among the initial signatories for the program, along with Greece, Italy, Spain and Turkey. Canada and Poland joined the pact a bit later.
However, the plans for MAWS began to fall apart during 2020 when Berlin canceled a life-extension program for the P-3s. Airbus and Lockheed Martin had been contracted by Berlin in 2015 to undertake the midlife update, which included a rewinging of the fleet, but costs and delays mounted.
The life-extension program would have allowed the P-3s to operate through to the mid-2030s, when the selected MAWS platform could have become available. But with the P-3s now facing an earlier-than-expected retirement and no fixed date for a MAWS platform's entry to service, the German Navy did not want to face a capability gap and skill fade of a decade or more—as the UK had with the retirement of the Nimrod back in 2009. (The UK closed the maritime patrol gap in early 2020 with the arrival of its own P-8s.)
Germany immediately began a market study for an interim solution that included modified Airbus C295 airlifters, ATR-72 regional airliners converted by Rheinland Air Service and the offer of leased Atlantique 2s by France, but it was the outright purchase of the P-8 that came out on top.
Although it has a relatively small coastline, Germany has always taken its maritime patrol capabilities seriously because a significant portion of its exports leave via its northern ports.
German lawmakers approved the Poseidon buy in June, and the FMS Letter of Offer and Acceptance for five P-8s was signed on June 30.
A spokesman for the German defense ministry says the purchase of the P-8 Poseidon is “an interim solution to avoid a shortfall of military skills when the P-3 Orion will be out of duty and the MAWS project is not ready.”
The French armed forces ministry has not responded to Aviation Week’s inquiries.
Without a MAWS initiative, Airbus’ proposals for a maritime patrol derivative of the A320neo airliner—the A320M3 (Modular Multi-Mission Aircraft), a EuroPoseidon of sorts—could likely to come to naught. Meanwhile, Dassault’s Trappier says the company will propose a maritime patrol variant of its new Falcon 10X business jet, currently under development to meet French requirements. Airbus tells Aviation Week that it is “fully supporting” the MAWS project and is working on different studies “to meet the requirements of both German and French forces.”
“We are promoting our wide range of MPA/ASW [anti-submarine warfare] capabilities and products, among which [is] the A320-based solution, to meet the most demanding MPA/ASW requirements which are expected in MAWS,” the company says.
NATO officials say its multinational Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft project concluded in July 2019 when the participating allies agreed on a statement of requirements, which are now serving as the baseline for future development and acquisition projects for an MPA.
Those nations are now exploring a so-called “Accelerated Interim Multinational MPA Solution, which is investigating the feasibility of establishing a multinational MPA fleet,” a NATO spokesman says.
