With two different sixth-generation fighter jets chasing the European market by 2040, the landscape has been signposted by a maze of acronyms and alliances. On the one hand, it is the UK, Italy, and Japan moving ahead with the Global Combat Air Programme. France, Germany, and Spain are pushing ahead, on the other hand, with their Future Combat Air System, also referred to as Système de Combat Aérien du Futur. The paper tries to make sense of these highly ambitious programs and their complex relationships.
The British quest began with the Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative, announced in the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review. It was a program that had the purpose of utilizing British industrial technologies for the eventual replacement of the Royal Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoons. By 2018, the British rolled out the Tempest concept aircraft at the Farnborough Airshow, with BAE Systems, Leonardo, MBDA, and Rolls-Royce forming “Team Tempest.”
However, Tempest and FCAS are not the same thing. FCAS is an overarching term that describes a “family of systems” that includes a range of technologies and design of a future fighter. Tempest is the fighter R&D program that falls under this umbrella. The UK plans to fly a Tempest demonstrator in 2027 for its next fighter jet.
It was in 2019 that Italy decided to join the UK-led FCAS effort, presumably because it wanted a more significant stake than it would have in the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS program. Sweden signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UK in the same year but remained peripheral to the FCAS initiative, limiting its participation to the technology sector and not the core fighter jet partnership.
In December 2022, the UK, Italy, and Japan announced the Global Combat Air Programme to deliver a sixth-generation fighter by 2035. This program will replace Eurofighter Typhoons for the UK and Italy and the Mitsubishi F-2 for Japan. Beginning in 2025, the GCAP phase of development will be opened by a core platform concept launch.
The reason Japan has chosen to partner with the UK and not the United States is founded on multiple factors, and Italy also joins in for its F-X fighter program. According to Japanese and British reports, the development time frames of the F-X and Tempest programs correspond and would allow cooperation. Besides, both countries’ tactical demands are similar: a big, twin-engine, long cruising range, multi-role stealth fighter.
The collaboration will also help Japan to cut down development costs and technological risks. Contrary to the United States, the UK has agreed to share confidential technological information with it, giving Japan independence in introducing localized upgrades, independent of the UK’s versions. This also harbors the possibility of exports in the future when Japan aims for Asian markets while the UK and Italy aim for Europe.
The FCAS/SCAF is a tri-national German-French-Spanish program for developing a sixth-generation fighter to replace the Eurofighter Typhoons and Dassault Rafales. The project features a New Generation Fighter and Remote Carriers, which will be connected by an Air Combat Cloud network capability. Despite inner frictions and postponements, the full operational maturity of the NGF is intended for 2040.
Although there has been some talk of merging the two programs, FCAS and Tempest, international defense collaboration is dense with issues, and a merge of the two programs looks unlikely. Both programs have very distinct sets of requirements, partners, and industrial stakeholders. As these nations forge ahead in their respective projects, so will the landscape of sixth-generation fighter jets, shaping the future of air combat capabilities in Europe and beyond.