BERLIN, Dec 16 (Reuters) - A meeting between the French, German and Spanish defence ministers last week failed to yield a breakthrough rescuing the troubled French-German-Spanish FCAS warplane programme, three people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The 100-billion-euro-project project under which the three countries would jointly build a fifth-generation fighter jet to replace France's Rafales and Germany and Spain's Eurofighters was now "very unlikely", one of the sources added.
The sources said France was hoping to postpone into next year a decision Germany had hoped to see finalised by the end of 2025.
An announcement that the project would be advanced to the next stage had previously been pencilled in for this week's meeting of EU government heads in Brussels.
Two further industry sources also said they expected talks on the programme's next phase to slip into 2026 since there was nothing to be gained from having a public dispute now.
The French and German defence ministries did not immediately comment on the matter.
The three countries had also struggled to reach an agreement on the "combat cloud" and drone systems that are envisaged as part of the FCAS programme, which was intended to replace the existing fourth-generation fighters by 2040.
At the core of the dispute is the desire of French military contractor Dassault to take a leading role in the project ahead of Airbus, the German partner - a position Germany regards as untenable, the sources said.
One difficulty is that the two countries need the warplanes for different roles.
France needs aircraft capable of carrying nuclear warheads and interoperating with its aircraft carrier, while Germany, which has no aircraft carriers, has already agreed to buy U.S. F-35 warplanes to carry NATO's nuclear warheads.
Earlier on Tuesday, the head of Dassault raised doubts over the future of the programme, saying it depended on whether Germany was willing to rethink its reliance on U.S. arms imports.
(Reporting by Markus Wacket; Additional reporting by John Irish and Tim Hepher; Writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Thomas Seythal and Alison Williams)
