The last lock to give way
If a final proof were needed that the syndrome documented by this trilogy was not a governance accident but a principle, it arrived the very day this series’ previous piece was published: the engine, ultimate symbol of the “family tool” in the words of a French industrial leader himself, did not survive any better than the airframe it was meant to power. What is striking is not that cooperation failed — this body of work has documented that since July — but the speed and inevitability with which each sub-system, one by one, followed the same path: governance without an arbiter, mounting demands, a joint venture for show, rupture.

Neuron reminds us, however, that none of this was inevitable: European cooperation works when it respects each partner’s expertise without disputing leadership. And the Gripen reminds us, in reverse, that a family tool can be complete in its airframe and still remain incomplete at its core. The lesson, for anyone following this body of work since its first piece, no longer needs demonstrating: it needs applying, engine included. The real question, in 2026, is no longer whether the divorce is final. It is whether the next generation of French weapons will be built on this body of work’s lessons — or whether it will repeat, alone this time, the same governance errors that killed FCAS as a couple.