Aerospace giant Airbus is planning a next-generation European fighter jet, the group's defence chief said Friday, hoping to profit from the Old Continent's renewed commitment to reach NATO defence spending targets. "We are currently putting together pre-design studies to show what such an aircraft could look like," Airbus Defence and Space chief executive Dirk Hoke told German business daily Handelsblatt. "We're speaking very intensively with European governments."
Many EU nations are looking to boost defence spending, as pressure mounts from Donald Trump's White House for NATO allies to increase military budgets to the alliance's target of 2.0 percent of GDP. A future Airbus fighter - known as the "Next Generation Weapons System" (NGWS) - would have "far-reaching new technical qualities," Hoke said. It could "combine the best of both worlds" of manned and unmanned aircraft, with a human-piloted plane working "in combination with a swarm of drones," he went on. "The overwhelming opinion of the nations is that they should hang on to manned platforms."