From 2012 onwards, a joined project of France and Great Britain evolved to build an unmanned combat air vehicle over a series of studies. The so called Future Combat Air System (FCAS) should combine the experiences of the drone projects of its main industry partners – BAE’s TARANIS and Dassault’s NEURON. The last step dated from 2016 with an agreement between London and Paris to develop a FCAS prototype. With the German-French FCAS plan the Anglo-French project gets off the grid afterwards but it’s still alive behind the scenes with a modified dimensioning. Asking the French MoD on the current stand of project and prototype, I get the following statement: „The French-British cooperation continues, but is limited to the development of technological bricks. We are pursuing the co-development of key technologies related to sensors suites, software architectures, interoperability, propulsion and aircraft systems through the FCAS TDC project.“ The shortcut TDC means „Technological Demonstration Cooperation“.

Dassaults NEURON drone – part of the Anglo-French FCAS project – Photo: Tangopaso / Wikimedia CC-Lizenz