New Delhi, June 9 -- The ink on the Franco-German fighter jet program's death certificate was barely dry when Berlin's plan for what comes next began to surface. On Tuesday morning, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stood before reporters and confirmed what months of back-channel industrial diplomacy had already produced: Germany had been in talks with Airbus about a replacement program well before Monday's formal announcement that the Future Combat Air System was finished.

the nine-year, €100 billion-plus European defence flagship - not as a crisis that caught Berlin flat-footed, but as an exit Berlin had quietly prepared for, even as it publicly maintained commitment to the program until the last possible moment.

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