BELFAST — The UK Royal Air Force (RAF) must press forward with the multinational Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) to deliver a next generation fighter jet if it wants to take a stand against the “proliferation” of Russian and Chinese stealth aircraft, according to the head of the service.
The joint British, Italian and Japanese effort has been the subject of uncertainty in recent months after UK Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard refused to make a long term commitment to it on grounds that doing so could “prejudge” the outcome of a new strategic defense review, set to report in mid-2025.
Since Pollard’s comments, the Financial Times reported that over the “coming weeks” the Labour government will formally green light the multibillion-pound project. Government ministers have already agreed to such a decision, the publication said last week. In another boost for the project, Italy’s parliament approved the country’s continued participation today.
“The proliferation of stealth capability through the likes of the Chinese J-20 or the Russian Su-57 as well as increasingly long range air-to-air weapons like the PL-15 Thunderbolt, mean that we also need to be planning for the next generation capabilities now; that is why we need GCAP,” Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, RAF Chief of the Air Staff, said during a speech on Monday held by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) — a UK defense think tank. “GCAP is very deliberately being designed to complement and enhance the capabilities of F-35, not replace it, but we also know that even a force of F-35 and GCAP will need to be augmented by what we call Autonomous Collaborative Platforms [ACPs] to defeat the threats that we see emerging.”
The GCAP fighter jet is planned to replace British and Italian Eurofighter Typhoons as well as Japanese F-2s, with a service entry date of 2035. It is also expected to operate alongside ACPs or adjunct aircraft, similar to US Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). Additionally, GCAP industry partners are committed to flying a crewed, supersonic and low observable aircraft demonstrator within four years. Under the previous Conservative administration, London committed £2 billion ($2.55 billion) to GCAP out to May 2025.
Knighton’s support for GCAP comes on the heels of BAE Systems unveiling a new concept of the future crewed fighter jet, based around a conventional delta wing design and distinguished by an increased wingspan compared to previous iterations.
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All industry partners are “steaming ahead” with design activities of the next generation fighter, Herman Claesen, managing director of Future Combat Air Systems at BAE Systems told reporters at the Farnborough Air Show in July. He added that the next engineering milestone for GCAP is a systems requirements review, directly supporting planning for launch of a development phase next year.
Knighton did not share any comments relating to industry progress, other than to reconfirm that the RAF is on course to receive a first “operationally useful” ACP “before the end of the financial year.” The UK has not said which ACP it has selected specifically, but it will be a Tier 1 or disposable type, in line with comments made by Knighton to the Defence Committee [PDF] in February. At that time, he said that a focus on Tier 1 was based on assessment of costs against operational benefits. London also expects to operate a “suite” of ACPs by 2030, according to its ACP strategy [PDF].
The RAF is targeting acquisition of ACPs to sit alongside GCAP and F-35 jets as a way of increasing combat mass and allow crewed platforms to be less vulnerable to attack. Such is the focus on the effort that London wants to see the air vehicles flying regularly alongside crewed fighters “as part of a national or coalition force” by the end of the decade.
“This high-low mix of platforms will provide the cost effective way of delivering the combat mass we still need to win against the ever improving enemy,” said Knighton.
“With multiple nations such as the US, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, actively investing in their own versions of ACPs, now is the last safe moment to commit to an ACP if we’re to retain a lead and seize the initiative as well as the market.”
The UK has still to settle on an ACP budget. “The exact level of resource to be allocated is yet to be defined,” states the strategy document, while the RAF’s ability to “rapidly” bring new drones into service took a knock when a lawmaker revealed in March that 216 Squadron, stood up in 2020 to specifically test and experiment with uncrewed aircraft, had yet to carry out a single drone test.