Dassault Aviation head cautions that FCAS warplane deal is not done yet

PARIS (Reuters) – Eric Trappier, the head of French company Dassault Aviation, cautioned on Monday that a deal over developing the new FCAS fighter jet was not formally completed yet.

The German government said last Friday that France, Germany and Spain had reached agreement on starting the next phase of development of the new fighter jet dubbed FCAS, Europe’s largest defence project which has an estimated cost of more than 100 billion euros ($102.32 billion).

“There was a sort of pseudo-political announcement that was made. I think that the German approvals – which were hard to get – had come out and that in turn led to some leaks. But it is not yet done,” Trappier told RTL Radio.

France’s Dassault Aviation, Airbus and Indra – the latter two representing Germany and Spain, respectively – are involved in the scheme to start replacing French Rafale and German and Spanish Eurofighters from 2040.

($1 = 0.9773 euros)

(Reporting by Myriam Rivet; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)