The Global Combat Air Programme
Britain, Japan, and Italy are building the Tempest fighter under GCAP, but can they afford it - and what happens if they fail?
The Global Combat Air Programme is a British, Japanese and Italian joint effort to develop a sixth generation air combat system, including a crewed fighter jet, UAVs, AI driven battle management systems, advanced sensors, and weapons. As U.S. focus shifts toward China and European nations question the long-term reliability of American security guarantees, these three allies are investing in their own next-generation airpower. The GCAP is vital to ensure that Britain, Japan, and Italy maintain a defense industry capable of producing first-rate air capabilities.
With Russia pressing against NATO’s borders and China rapidly modernizing its air force, Britain, Japan, and Italy can no longer rely on legacy platforms. The Eurofighters flown by the RAF and Aeronautica Militare, along with Japan’s F-2 fighters, will soon become obsolete and have growing operational costs. Japan faces a rapidly modernizing Chinese air force and needs GCAP to counter the PLAAF’s J-20s, J-35s, and long-range missile threats by 2035. For the UK and Italy, they are facing the prospect of deterring further Russian aggression against European states, possibly without American backing.
GCAP will be staggeringly expensive. While the UK, Japan, and Italy have all pledged to increase defense spending, funding for the project will compete with urgent priorities - from refilling munitions stockpiles to modernizing naval and ground forces - and existing budgetary black holes, which in the British case total hundreds of billions of pounds. Although a treaty underpins the project, Britain’s domestic political pressures could threaten long-term procurement, especially if defense planners prioritize short-term fixes over long-term capability. Can Britain, Japan, and Italy afford to build their own sixth-generation fighter? More importantly however, can they afford not to?
A German Luftwaffe Tranche 3 Eurofighter Typhoon
GCAP’s Foundations: Why Britain, Japan, and Italy Joined Forces for a Sixth-Gen Fighter
GCAP was announced on the 9th December 2022. The agreement merged the UK's and Italian Tempest program with Japan's F-X fighter program to create a program to deliver an in-service air combat system by 2035. Tempest originated from a 2015 British Ministry of Defence study to explore what was then called the Future Combat Air System, which saw British defense firms BAE Systems (assembly), Rolls-Royce (engines), Leonardo UK (avionics), and MBDA UK (weapons) collaborate to work on a replacement for the Eurofighter.
The Eurofighter was initially conceived in the 1980s as an air superiority fighter, but shrinking defense budgets after the end of the Cold War and increased upgrades through to Tranche 3 expanded its role to be able to deliver ground attack missions. It was the product of collaboration between the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain, who split the work 33, 33, 21 and 12% respectively. 680 Eurofighters have been ordered as exports were secured to Austria, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The deal to sell Eurofighter to Saudi Arabia was held up for years by the German Bundestag, and is still blocking potentiala exports to Turkey, a fact that will not have been forgotten by the British and Italian governments who hope to export Tempest in the future.
Eurofighter's development was beset by the typical problems of military procurement, with significant cost overruns (development costs were double the initial estimate of €20 billion, leading to orders being cut back) and time delays (it took 10 years to deliver the first aircraft after the prototype flew), plus fierce political disagreements about the initial operating requirements and eventual workshare. The four separate production lines, resulting from a desire to share the development costs, led to poor efficiencies and higher logistics costs. Although the export price eventually reached $117 million for a Trance 3A jet, the purchase price for the original countries involved in developing the Eurofighter was closer to $201 million per unit. For potential foreign purchasers, this compares to a French-built Rafeal jet for $200 million (however French contracts usually include armaments, training, infrastructure upgrades and maintenance support) or F-16 with a price tag of $70 million, although this requires a close and ongoing relationship with the US government. A Eurofighter's high purchase ongoing cost is not made any easier by its very expensive ongoing costs, which average a reported $65,000 per flying hour. The costs are so high partly because of the multi-national supply chain and because the Eurofighter is twin engined, increasing fuel costs. For reference, the F-35, a generation ahead of the Eurofighter in stealth, avionics and weapon systems, costs around $41,000 per hour.
Despite upgrades, the Eurofighter is now showing its age. Eurofighter has reached close to its full development potential as its limited stealth leaves it vulnerable to integrated Russian S-400/S-500 and Chinese HQ-9/HQ-22 ground based air defense (GBAD) systems, which can detect the Eurofighter from hundreds of kilometers away. Additionally, long-range anti-air weapons such as the Chinese PL-17 and Russian 40N6 are capable of shooting down non-stealth fourth generation aircraft such as the Eurofighter before they could get close to GBAD systems. The successor to Eurofighter must be cheaper, stealthier, and deadlier.
To achieve these aims, in 2018, the Tempest concept was revealed at the Farnborough Air Show. Shortly afterwards, Italian companies Leonardo, Avio Aero, and MBDA Italy joined the project and Swedish firm SAAB, who build JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets, entered into discussions about also collaborating. At the time, Sweden was not a member of NATO, and SAAB focused on exporting jets to second-tier air forces, so their involvement was not core to the program. Meanwhile, French companies Dassault and Safran were working on developing their own sixth generation fighter, unhelpfully also named in English Future Combat Air System (to simplify this the project will be referred to by its French name, Système de combat aérien du futur, SCAF) with German based Airbus Defense, MTU Aero Engines, Hensoldt, and Diehl Defence. Although it may appear the two projects are in direct competition with one another, differences over what to prioritize, with SCAF aiming to develop the systems before the jet (and put integrate these systems on an upgraded Rafael fighter to bridge the gap until the SCAF next generation jet is available) while GCAP is pursuing the manned aircraft first. SCAF is not due to fly a demonstrator until 2029 (already a two year delay from the initial proposal) and is not due to be in service until 2040. These differences in delivery, plus no Rafale jets in service with the British, Japanese and Italian air forces made it possible for Japan to get involved in GCAP, signing the agreement that announced the joint participation of the UK, Japan, and Italy in 2022.
The Japanese Air Self Defense Force never expressed an interest in purchasing Eurofighter due to the exclusion of its own defense industry and its possession of the F-2 Jet. The F-2 was a Japanese manufactured version of the F-16C fourth generation fighter, and although manufactured and assembled by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it was heavily reliant on Lockheed Martin for the radar system, flight control software, avionics, sensors and weapon systems. MHI had no role in building the engine, relying instead on the General Electric F110-GE-129 used by other F-16s. Due to the significant involvement of US companies and American controls on exporting its defense technology, the F-2 could never be realistically exported, raising the program's cost as only the JSDAF would purchase F-2 jets which ended up twice as expensive as a conventionally supplied F-16. Despite this, in developing a replacement for the F-2 (known as the Mitsubishi F-X), MHI approached Lockheed Martin again for help and access to sixth generation technologies, but the US government refused to lift export controls to help its Japanese ally, despite MHI building a working demonstrator that flew in 2016. With the attempted collaboration with the US rebuffed and a need to replace the F-2 by 2035, MHI approached BAE and asked to merge the F-X with the Tempest program, creating GCAP, encompassing the Tempest/F-X jet and the technological ecosystem that will make the Tempest jet a truly sixth generation fighter. Although Tempest will not have the economies of scale that next generation US and Chinese aircraft will have from their much larger air forces, Tempest will have a larger initial order for the single replacement that all three air forces need rather than two separate programs, plus the potential for export partners that Japan has previously been restricted from.
Beyond the Eurofighter: What GCAP Promises for the Future of Air Combat
GCAP participants have already spent over $8 billion developing the Tempest and F-X jets, but this is just a fraction of the program’s total cost. While early cost estimates for fighter jet programs are often overly optimistic, the British Ministry of Defence has budgeted another $15 billion for development through 2036, on top of the $2.5 billion already spent. If preliminary workshare estimates align with the final costs, Britain and Japan will each bear 40% of the burden, with Italy contributing the remaining 20%, putting the remaining price tag at around $37.5 billion. What are these nations getting for their investment?
The most visible aspect of GCAP will be the fighter element, which will be known in Britain as Tempest. Tempest will have to balance stealth, reliably network with satellites, drones, and ground forces, excel in air superiority, strike, suppression of enemy air defense and electronic warfare missions, fire long range anti-air and ground attack missiles, be capable of future upgrades and do all of this while remaining cost competitive versus other Western fighter jets to not totally cannibalize the budgets of its own air forces and remain attractive to potential export partners. This is an ambitious challenge.
As Western militaries do not have a comparable force such as the PLA Rocket Force or Russian Strategic Rocket Forces to deliver large numbers of ground launched ballistic missiles to targets, and the only realistic method of delivering sea launched missiles would be via highly valuable submarines, Western militaries are currently dependent on air power to achieve missions against a potential Chinese, Russian or nations supplied by them. Although F-22 and F-35 have not been used in combat against modern air defenses, during the Gulf War, F-117 stealth fighters flying missions against formidable Soviet supplied Iraqi air defenses managed to deliver 30% of the munitions dropped against strategic Iraqi targets despite making up only 2.5% of the deployed American air force and did not lose a single aircraft. It was claimed that the Iraqis did not even successfully track an F-117, demonstrating just how effective stealth fighters can be versus integrated air defenses.
Chinese systems, such as the HQ-9 and HQ-22 operated by the PLAAF, rely on a ground-based radar to track and guide missiles to their targets, but if the radar is destroyed, the missiles are rendered useless. Although these systems are currently not as advanced as Russian air defenses, the PLAAF aims to counter stealth fighters by providing a dense, overlapping network of missile coverage with a larger number of deployed GBAD systems as well as airborne early warning aircraft (KJ-500) and satellites. Fourth-generation fighters like F-2 would be highly vulnerable to operating in this environment, and F-35 would have to operate at an increased distance until enough missions can degrade the air defenses over time.
The Russian S-500 mobile air defense system.
The S-500 is Russia’s most advanced air defense system, designed to detect and shoot down aircraft, missiles, and even satellites. It uses a network of powerful radars to track targets at long range, scanning the sky for threats. Once a target has been detected, some of the missiles fired by the S-500 also have their own radar systems to help guide them to their target. Russia claims the S-500 can do for up to ten targets moving at speeds upwards of 15,000mph. Although this is currently the most advanced GBAD system, the S-500 is vulnerable to anti-radiation missiles (missiles which home in on radars), jamming from electronic warfare systems, and if a target can be made stealthy enough by reducing its radar signature, the S-500 will be less effective at finding potential targets in the first place. Russian and Chinese GBAD systems will not just be operated by the Chinese and Russian militaries, but have already been exported to Iran. Tempest will blend an airframe designed to minimize potential radar deflection, radar absorbent materials (which remain highly classified), deployable expendable drones and reduced engine heat signatures to make detecting it as difficult as possible. As the US is unwilling to share its own stealth technologies, this cost has to be borne by the Tempest developers, which is one of the reasons why this is such an expensive program.
AI is not only being used to assist in the development of GCAP, but is also intended to be essential in helping the pilot manage the flight mission. As Tempest will be collecting more information on incoming threats, potential targets, and also managing drones deployed from the aircraft itself in addition to potential “loyal wingmen” or collaborative combat aircraft, AI integration will be necessary to help a pilot process this extremely complex environment. Although the Lightweight Affordable Novel Combat Aircraft (LANCA), a British low-cost unmanned air system also known as Mosquito, was envisioned as a part of GCAP, was cancelled in 2022, there is a follow-on program being funded, although details are sparse. Looking at US efforts to produce unmanned air combat systems such as the XQ-58A Valkyrie UAV demonstrates that if GCAP can integrate loyal wingmen into the system, there will be additional aircraft flying alongside Tempest which can act as decoys for air defense systems and carry weapons to assist in strike missions. The XQ-58A, although some time away from entering frontline service with the USAF, has a reported cost of $5.5 million, so if GCAP can develop its own drones that can work with Tempest its lethality can significantly increase while adding on relatively minor costs as opposed to adding additional jets costing hundreds of millions of dollars each. Due to an adversary's potential electronic warfare capabilities and the need to maintain control over the drone, manned Tempest jets will be required to accompany combat drones on missions.
As future jets evolve, their weapons systems will transform alongside them. The UK and Japan are working on a successor to the Meteor missile built by MBDA, the unimaginatively named Joint New Air-to-Air Missile. For ground strike missions, the British and French versions of MBDA (which is a pan-European company with ownership split between BAE, Airbus and Leonardo) are working on a successor to the Storm Shadow missile that has been used by Ukrainian forces to attack, among other targets, Sevastopol port and the Russian submarine Rostov-na-Donu. Perhaps the most exciting potential weapons system related to GCAP would be integrating directed energy (laser) weapons to disable incoming missile and drone threats. The MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), working with its industry partners MBDA, Leonardo and QinetiQ, have been working on a directed energy weapon called DragonFire that has been in development since 2017 and in 2024 was demonstrated hitting targets up to a kilometer away. However, it is not clear how the power or space requirements of DragonFire would be compatible with a single jet aircraft that has to provide enough energy to fly the plane and remain as stealthy as possible, although it is not inconceivable that a dedicated drone aircraft could fly alongside Tempest armed with DragonFire to act as a last resort defensive system.
Can the UK, Japan, and Italy Actually Build GCAP?
Defense budgets have been growing across the world, spurred by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the election of President Trump in 2024. In the UK, defense spending was just over 2% of GDP for the 2023/24 and Sir Keir Starmer has announced that it will rise to 2.5% by 2027. Japanese defense spending was historically low as a percentage of GDP, but in 2022 the Kishida administration confirmed that spending would rise to 2% by 2027. Italian spending is the lowest of the three partners both in cash and as a percentage of GDP, failing to meet its current NATO target of 2% in spending 1.57%.
Despite these growing figures which should enable the development and purchase of Tempest jets, the British headline figure masks significant weakness. Included in British defense spending figures are pension payments for veterans, which although valuable do not contribute anything to current defensive capabilities, and the increase to 2.5% of GDP is to be partially “paid for” by moving the budgets of the intelligence services (MI5, MI6 and GCHQ) to be included under defense spending. Furthermore, in addition to the estimated £16.9/$21 billion of unfunded commitments in the MoD's equipment plan (mainly as a consequence of developing a replacement for the British nuclear deterrent), any more money for the British armed forces is likely to be hoovered up in replacing munitions donated to Ukraine. Japan’s defense spending increases are healthier and reflect growing investment that will deliver capabilities, but significant public debt (9.1% of the budget goes on interest rate repayments while interest rates are at 0.5%) and growing inflation for the first time in decades could put pressure on Japanese finances. Italy is hoping to fund increased defense expenditures through relaxing EU fiscal rules.
Beyond budgetary considerations, the industrial capacity of GCAP partners will significantly impact their ability to deliver the program on time and within cost. In the UK, industrial electricity prices are the highest in Europe, driven by carbon prices and taxes, a heavy reliance on gas bought on the market when intermittent renewables are unavailable, and the cost of upgrading transmission networks to deliver intermittent renewable sources, which are located far from users. British manufacturing output is down 9.2% since 2021, but within that decline are starker falls, such as basic metals down 35% and electrical equipment manufacture down nearly 50%. If British deindustrialisation continues, driven by legacies of a more peaceful time (the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Net Zero 2050 ambition) supporting advanced manufacturing with a smaller and smaller industrial base will become more difficult and expensive. Although BAE and Rolls-Royce (which look set to build the engines for Tempest) are world-class companies, British energy and industrial strategies undermine future competitiveness and raise costs for the Ministry of Defense. Woes are not just British - Italian industrial capacity has fallen for 23 consecutive years amidst poor GDP growth.
In this tight budgetary environment and with constrained industrial capacity in the UK and Italy, additional partners for GCAP have been proposed to lessen the financial burden. Saudi Arabia, which has no significant domestic aerospace industry but large reserves of cash, has previously bought Eurofighters, is hoping to build up a more robust economy as the world potentially transitions away from oil in transport use, and has a fierce rivalry with Iran, who possess Chinese and Russian air defense systems. However, including Saudi Arabia in the program would bring potential difficulties in exporting Tempest to other Gulf states, with which Saudi Arabia has a cooler relationship, such as Qatar and the UAE.
Although Japan has moved away from its own strict export controls, it may be unwilling to include Saudi Arabia. Additionally, involving Saudi Arabia in the program itself may upset Israel and by extension the United States, as the US is uncertain about providing Israel's neighbours with the capability to develop the most advanced military capabilities, which is a different consideration to selling weapons and platforms to the Gulf states. Complicating matters further is the pressure the US could bring on BAE, as the British defense firm generates 40% of its revenue from supplying the US military. Domestic British political opinion regarding Saudi investment is not universally supportive - there was significant pushback over the Saudi sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund (PIF), acquiring Newcastle Football Club.
Although South Korea and Japan have a deep distrust of each other despite their mutual fear of China, if the US is unwilling to sell NGAD to South Korea, which needs to replace its KF-16 jets around the end of the 2030s, South Korea may be a potential development partner or be open to acquiring Tempest fighters. South Korean defense firm Korea Aerospace Industries is building KF-21 Boramae “4.5” generation fighters, which are less capable than F-35 jets in stealth terms, but may be viable for upgrades to provide South Korea with more advanced capabilities without paying the full cost of sixth generation fighters.
Another potential partner is India. India is involved in the QUAD grouping of the US, Japan and Australia, and is a regional rival with China, but unlike Saudi Arabia, it does have its own domestic aerospace industry, and any partnership would realistically come with a diluted workshare agreement. Indian cooperation with Western countries is growing, but it is not as opposed to Russia as the UK and Italy are, flying Russian jets, was unwilling to sanction Russia in 2022, and attracting significant Russian investments. The geopolitical considerations of any further partners make expanding GCAP tricky.
How It Stacks Up Against Rival Programs
Other leading militaries are developing sixth-generation fighters within and outside Western alliances. While the US has been happy to share the development and production of F-35 fighters, it has never shared the technology underlying the F-22 air superiority fighter. Given the refusal to develop a sixth generation fighter platform alongside Japan, it is doubtful the Next Generation Air Dominance Program being developed by the US Air Force or the US Navy’s F/A-XX Program will be exported to many potential allies, with the possible exception of Israel. NGAD will be so expensive to develop (with an approximate cost of $300m per plane) that there is currently a fierce debate within the USAF on the viability of the program as the USAF also has to replace its air-to-air refueling, airborne warning and control systems and stealth bomber fleet in addition to aquiring 1300 more F-35 jets, a bill that will total hundreds of billions of dollars. When push comes to shove, the US can afford and is likely to go ahead with all of these acquisition programs, but if even the US is worried about costs, buying NGAD from the US will be ruinous for the budgets of less wealthy air forces.
How the USAF NGAD fighter may look.
The PLAAF showcased a potential demonstrator of its J-36 fighter in December 2024, meaning the PLAAF will have sixth-generation fighters in service before 2030 and potentially before the Tempest demonstrator (which is under construction) flies for the first time, due in 2027. Tempest will not compete for exports versus Chinese fighters, but it must be more or equally capable of engaging in combat with J-36 at very long ranges, as China has air-to-air missiles reportedly capable of reaching targets from 400km away.
SCAF, the joint French/German/Spanish sixth generation program, was originally on a more ambitious schedule than GCAP, but arguments over workshare between the two prime contractors, French Dassault Aviation and German Airbus Defense and Space have pushed the demonstrator phase back to at least 2029 and no fighter in service until potentially the 2050s. Although President Trump's election may focus minds and accelerate the development, the Japanese requirement for a replacement for F-2 by 2035 may put future development of aircraft on different replacement schedules, meaning if exports can be secured for Tempest, purchasing countries would not necessarily want to switch future aircraft suppliers for fighter jets. Germany has announced it is buying further Eurofighters for the Luftwaffe, limiting the number of SCAF jets it may purchase in the future. SCAF will want to export its aircraft and combat system to European partners as well as Gulf countries, but as European countries closer to Russia have a heightened sense of danger, Tempest may be able to secure orders in Poland, Romania, Finland, Sweden and Turkey if it is available sooner. Export orders don’t just recoup costs for manufacturers, but fund the development of future aircraft, strengthen diplomatic links between the participants and keep the military industrial capabilities of the exporting nation viable. In the UK, GCAP will support tens of thousands of jobs, and keep the pipeline of designers and workers for manufacturing secure for decades.
Conclusion - The Cost of Inaction: Why GCAP Must Succeed
GCAP will undoubtedly be expensive and is not guaranteed to be delivered on time. Although it is unlikely to be cancelled (despite a worrying wobble from British defense ministers in 2024), given the severe budgetary pressures facing the British defense budget in particular, there will be calls to simply “buy American” especially if the timetable slips. It cannot be assured that buying Ameican made jets will be an option in the future - all three nations have been excluded from buying the most advanced American stealth planes, and if the US chooses to change its stance towards it European allies radically, Britain and Italy will be wholly dependent on the French, German and Spanish effort which has already been subject to major delays and has different specifications and timetables. GCAP must succeed to retain independence in airpower.
This should not mean that defense companies should hold the whip hand over their relevant governments. With the expense of advanced aircraft development, governments cannot rely on start-up players to enter a very small and technically challenging market, but it is clear that BAE, Leonardo, Rolls Royce, and to a lesser extent Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will not be able to choose to reenter this market again in the future. Without sustained development programs, engineering expertise will decline, supply chains will be lost, and companies will pivot away from military aviation. As much as the Royal Air Force, Aeronautica Militare and JSDAF will suffer from not having access to cutting edge air combat technology unless foreign supplies are willing to provide it to them, the defense companies will suffer from not being able to offer the first rate jets and may move away from military aviation altogether.
GCAP could very well be the last manned combat aircraft produced before AI and network systems become secure and reliable enough to undertake missions by themselves, but as defensive technology advances this may not ever be good enough. Manned combat aircraft may continue to be relevant for the lifetimes of everyone involved, and if the capability to produce them is lost, it is unlikely ever to be regained. Not developing GCAP would be a strategic mistake. The stakes are clear: either Britain, Japan, and Italy build their own future, or they surrender it to others.
Great review!