On 16 July 2018, opening day of the Farnborough International Air Show 2018 in presence of British Prime Minister Theresa May, the UK ‘future fighter’ concept was unveiled, seen as a major milestone in its approach to develop a 6th generation fighter through international cooperation. As an integral part of the UK’s ‘Combat Air Strategy’ paper, the core ‘Tempest Team’ will comprise BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, Leonardo, MBDA along with the UK’s defence equipment and support agency and the RAF rapid capability office to develop a twin-engine, delta-winged, low-observable fighter. To be known as the Tempest, the future fighter will eventually supplant the present Typhoon and operate alongside F-35 Lightning IIs.
An Anglo-Swedish-Italian programme?
Even as this issue goes to press, and although not officially commented upon, this British-led future fighter programme could possibly include Sweden and Italy as participants in development and future deployment. If this unravels, the Tempest programme could well have BAE Systems and Saab working together in competition to the Franco-German Future Combat Air System (FCAS), involving both manned and unmanned aircraft.
BAE Systems and Saab have earlier worked together on the Gripen multirole combat aircraft programme, the latter company having also co-developed the T-X advanced jet trainer with Boeing to meet the large USAF requirement for replacement of the T-38. The UK Government has also been assisting Turkey develop its new generation fighter and Saab has made similar proposals for both the Turkish TFX and South Korean K-FX programmes.
Reactions from Airbus
The first reaction from the Airbus Group which will be working with Dassault on the FCAS programme, was that it “notes the UK’s announcement regarding its plans for the development of a new fighter aircraft and is encouraged to see the government’s financial commitment to the project, which supports the goal of sovereign European defense capability”. Further, ‘a Future Combat Air System is of utmost importance to Europe’s armed forces and therefore we look forward to continuing collaborative discussions in the area with all relevant European players”.
Thereafter, the Chief Executive of Airbus, Tom Enders, has virtually opened the door suggesting a merger of the future fighter programmes, “to create a pan American military aircraft company with the might to take on America”. The former German Army paratrooper, Tom Enders said that it was time “to seriously look at consolidating and coalescing efforts eventually to one”. He elaborated in saying that “there’s just no room for three different programmes, not even for two …. the main players need to align industrial forces to crease one big programme that could win a large number of jet orders in Europe and have a significant chance of winning big export orders outside Europe.