{"id":43976,"date":"2018-05-11T18:03:51","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T18:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/05\/11\/britain-flip-flops-toward-isr-drone-but-france-keeps-eye-on-combat-capability\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T14:04:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:04:26","slug":"britain-flip-flops-toward-isr-drone-but-france-keeps-eye-on-combat-capability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/unmanned\/2018\/05\/11\/britain-flip-flops-toward-isr-drone-but-france-keeps-eye-on-combat-capability\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain flip-flops toward ISR drone, but France keeps eye on combat capability"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

PARIS \u2015 An Anglo-French project for a combat drone demonstrator is switching tracks, as Britain is now more interested in pursuing a surveillance UAV, according to French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe FCAS project is undergoing a reorientation,\u201c she said in an interview with weekly magazine Air & Cosmos, published May 11. \u201cOur British allies would like to steer the project toward a surveillance drone.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

London and Paris, in a bid to pool their interest<\/a> in respectively surveillance and combat drones, are working on \u201cdefinition of the technology packages, which would allow us to feed into these two streams at the same time,\u201c she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

France and the U.K. had planned to pursue a \u20ac2 billion (U.S. $2.4 billion) project to design and build a technology demonstrator for a combat drone, dubbed Future Combat Air System Demonstration Program, or FCAS DP. But the lack of announcement of a program launch at the Anglo-French summit in January was seen by French industry as a rethink on the British side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

France, however, has continued interest in building an unmanned combat air vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\t