British engineering SME MGI Engineering has unveiled a new autonomous combat aircraft, the T-022 Vortex, which it is aiming at the UK’s StormFighter requirement, the company stated.
The Oxfordshire-based firm describes Vortex as the first UK-built Autonomous Collaborative Platform of its kind, an uncrewed aircraft designed from the outset to operate alongside crewed jets as part of a coordinated team. The launch follows what the company says was successful testing of its deep-strike TigerShark programme under the Ministry of Defence’s Project BRAKESTOP.
According to MGI, the aircraft has a maximum take-off weight of 3,500kg, a range exceeding 4,000km and a top speed approaching Mach 0.85. The company says it can carry up to 1,000kg of payload across four weapon or sensor stations, both internally and externally, at a cost of between £3 million and £6 million per aircraft depending on fit. The company states that Vortex is powered by a Rolls-Royce Orpheus engine, or similar powerplants, delivering 12 to 16 kilonewtons of thrust.
MGI says the aircraft is engineered for manned-unmanned teaming, allowing a single crewed aircraft such as a Typhoon or F-35 to direct multiple Vortex platforms as autonomous wingmen, sharing sensor data and executing coordinated tasks without a ground operator in the loop for every decision. In contested airspace where communications may be jammed, the company says the aircraft is designed to continue operating independently.
The firm positions Vortex within the UK’s Autonomous Collaborative Platforms programme, the MOD-backed effort to develop affordable uncrewed aircraft that extend the reach of the RAF’s crewed force. That programme was announced by the government as StormFighter, backed by £300 million in the Defence Investment Plan.
Mike Gascoyne, CEO of MGI Engineering, was quoted in the press release as saying: “Vortex is the logical next step in the journey we’ve been on since SkyShark and TigerShark. This isn’t an experiment, it is a fully capable collaborative combat aircraft, engineered at a price point that makes it possible to field at genuine scale. That changes the economics of air power, and it changes the risk calculus. You can put Vortex into the most dangerous environments without putting a pilot there with it.”
According to MGI, the aircraft measures 11 metres in length with a 7.6-metre wingspan, comparable to a light combat aircraft, and has an operating altitude range of 20 metres to 12,000 metres. The company says it is credible across mission profiles from intelligence gathering and electronic warfare to strike and the suppression of enemy air defences.
Vortex joins a growing family of autonomous platforms marketed by the company, including the SkyShark short-range one-way effector, the TigerShark long-range deep-strike cruise missile, and a lower-cost development platform, LeopardShark, derived from a reusable version of the TigerShark.
The unveiling illustrates the breadth of industry interest in the StormFighter competition, which has drawn interest from established primes and smaller firms alike. BAE Systems unveiled its own sovereign collaborative combat aircraft prototype, Brontanax, at the Farnborough International Airshow earlier this month. Mike Gascoyne, MGI’s founder, is well known in engineering circles from a long career in Formula One aerodynamics before moving into aerospace, and the company has positioned itself around low-cost, rapidly developed autonomous systems rather than large crewed-scale programmes.
Good. Check it does what it says on the tin. Check it is capable of handling everything from missiles to guns.
If still no problems order 100 with various adaptations.
In an ideal world it should be carrier capable.
See if Ukraine will help us test a further 50.
Need it capable of the type of mass production Henry Form could only dream of.
Probably worth testing in the Arctic & Falklands plus somewhere much warmer.
Maybe wait until its actually exists and has flown perhaps?
Better yet, instead of the RAF having to try and support dozens of different types of CCAs, they launch a programme where manufacturers can submit their designs for comparison. The RAF then orders the best solution. Would need a fancy name for this programme, how about “Storm Fighter”? That’s catchy…
If it is good enough, will the RAF/MoD be able to resist ordering an asset much cheaper than the reported £20 million each Brontanax? ( cough cough )
Or go for the pricier option. Interesting to see what Streeting decides
I suspect they will be tempted by BAE’s offfering. I suspect they want an export winning high visible product and Brontanax might well be that. If no one else produces a 6th Gen aircraft and the UK has its one CCA tailor made to operate with Tempest it could be a resounding export success that could easily double UK defence exports and produce tens of thousands of jobs alongside GCAP.
A cheap as chips basic offering from a UK SME probably can’t garner the same interest.
The fact that BAE manufactures near Manchester is likely to be a major factor in their consideration as well.
I think we need to get use to a UK armed forces procurement that’s a lot more like France where exports and jobs take precedence over short term military expediency and interoperability with the USA. That’s how they will justify the massive extra cost and borrowing they are looking to do. CCA and Tempest along side a renewed naval offering (Command Ship and T91,92,93,94) will be the major spearhead of this effort. Also expect JLR to win the light mobility vehicle program.
Agree, I too think they’ll choose the more expensive option in BAES.
But if we are talking about mass, it’d be good to at least get a couple of these built to flying condition to test them.
To be honest if you have 2 options, one a more expensive high end and the other a cheaper bit more attritional.. why not go for both. We seem to be falling into the one silver bullet does everything false paradigm that the UK always falls into.. give a squadron a couple of sets of high end expensive drones for the more challenging ops and a few sets of cheaper drones for lower end stuff or if it needs a no return mission undertaken.
I think that’s one thing people are not building in to the equation… cheaper drones that can easily be replaced allow for low cost and risk no return missions and that’s hard to mitigate against.
I suppose if you want something attritional then you don’t want it costing £3-6 million and needing its own runway and maintenance team. You will probably be looking at something more like MALD, SPEAR EW or AR3 Storm shroud in the hundreds of thousands and air or catapult launched.
3-6 million is totally attritional range.. South Koreas Hyunmoo-2C and the bunker-penetrating Hyunmoo-5 have estimated production costs between $5 million and $15 million each and these are one shot attrition resources.
So yep if you are using five 3 million pound drones and you can kill a core strategic asset but will loss the lot then that’s a good attritional unit.
If you think modified for inflation a Sherman tank cost about 1.5 million and had five trained crew they were most definitely Attritional assets.. they were so attritional it was British army policy in the 44/45 European campaign to have a 100% in theatre attritional reserve.
If you get any asset in the UK inventory that cost £6 million wasted then you can bet your going to spend a long time doing paperwork 😀
I totally agree.
You said Streeting would cut the waste and be more efficient, judging by his actions at the DoH.
Lets see if they resist BAES and go for these as well or one hat fits all solution.
Yep, I would say 25 million a pop is probably far too much for a high numbers drone.
I suppose the question will be on radars. If your going to put a very expensive radar in a platform then your probably going to want it to be survivable. If it doesn’t have a radar then how useful is it. Britain will run out of Meteors pretty fast if Tempest starts firing them fast enough to need a drone carrying 6 more.
Also if you think about a low cost CCA like this carrying 6 meteors then your £6 million drone is now carrying £12 million in missiles. Suddenly using a more survivable £25 million drone looks more prudent.
Sorry should be 4 meteors not 6 after looking at the picture.
And not attritable either. I understand that
Tier 3 in the UK system is survivable, Tier 2 attritable, Tier 1 expendable.
Interesting contrast here with BAE’s offering. This is £3-6 million while BAE appears to be looking at £25 million. This seems to be falling in,Jen with what happened in the US where Lockheed was looking at a CCA in the tens of million of dollars by the Airforce went with Anduril and GD in the millions of dollar range.
Ideally we would take on both however it’s a major question if a small SME can manufacture such a high end defence solution for such a low price. Kratos went down this route and ultimately failed to deliver for the minimal price($ 2 million) it promised.
Next big question is can BAE deliver anything on its own for a quarter of the price of a manned fighter and is a quarter of of the price of a manned fighter worth paying if the platform can’t operate on its own.
Ideally a high low mix might be the best solution but then that’s two separate logistics and training pipelines to sustain.
MGI should be delivering Tiger Shark for Brakestop later this year, a deliberately cost conscious project, so I guess we’ll find out soon enough whether they are up to doing cost and volume.
It’s good to have options, at the very least to make BAE price competitive.
GCAP is supposed to fly high and fast. 60,000 ft and supercruise. CCAs are limited to 40,000 ft and high subsonic. Will the CCAs be sent out first with GCAP taking over control when it arrives?
Yes, the CCA probably won’t operate directly with Tempest (following it) they will likely be sent form bases or even ground launched from near the front line. They will fly in an AO autonomously and then the manned aircraft will have the option to access them to either engage their weapons and sensors or send them towards a particular target with electronic counter measures and jamming.
However such formations are likely to only be used in conjunction with Tempest at the start of a major shooting war. On operations such as QRA and air policing I think it’s far more likely that either platform will operate alone.
If Russian bombers are detected then it’s likely that a tempest will take off alone as it’s going to be much faster. It may also be the case that CCA are used in their own and controlled by either a ground station or via AWACS.
Is that some other GCAP that Britain isn’t involved in?
Super cruise is still not anywhere near as effective as a subsonic cruise speed. It’s not as insanely wasteful as afterburners but even as super cruise aircraft like the f22 needs to overcoming the massive aerodynamic drag at supersonic speeds and still requires significantly more fuel per nautical mile than flying at its most economical subsonic.
In reality super cruise is still a used for a tactical response.. so making a fast intercept, or running at high speed after a strike… plodding to a strike or a long patrol will still be undertaken at subsonic cruise speed.
So an F22 using super cruise has a range of about 600 miles, on subsonic cruise it’s about 1000miles.
So is StormFighter the MoD program and Brontanax is BAE bid for StormFighter? I was a bit confused the other day with all the multiple articles that were released.
Yes, the naming had me confused too, for a time.
Storm Fighter seems to be the program, Brontonax the product on offer to meet it.
But then you also have Storm Shroud and Storm Fire which I think are the proper names of the assets.
Thanks for clearing that up, I think the problem is there are so many drone programs running concurrently it’s easy to mix them all up. Especially when they all have names that sound similar.
Yup. There are four Storm drone projects forming a framework. Storm Shroud is already operational, and along with Storm Chrome delivers EW. Storm Fighter delivers high capability kinetic. Storm Fire is 1000 mile range one way effector. Expect lots more confusing names to keep hitting the news.
Those names are just confusing for confusing sake. It’s like the bloody SPEAR series of missiles always get them confused.
Both would be an option at these prices.
Brontonax to fly with tempest/ lightning/ typhoon in a more dangerous theatre and these to escort E7/ rivet joint/ c17/ a400 etc al
Perhaps the best solution is for BAES to adopt this solution as it is c.20% the cost of a Brontanax,
the question is – is this good enough to team with a GCAP / Tempest or does it sit somewhere else in the mix
I thought the stated plan was for these loyal wings to be c. £1m a pop – this seems the closest at this point, definitely needs to be sub £10m imo
Assume Brontanax is similar to Ghostbat which is c.£10m and real, either way lets order some and send to Ukraine to see how they perform – no need for massive testing here when we can do it in a real war zone.
Vortex has only a very small weapons bay (400kg, 2 Meteor) and would carry most of its weapons externally as seen above. Brontanax articles sometimes included the quote that it had the capacity for every missile currently in RAF service. Assuming that includes Storm Shadow that allows up to 1300kg payload and a 5m long weapon bay, which I can believe given the huge lower fuselage and engine placement.
So this is very much a low cost alternative, I think it could be worth it as a more expendable missile platform but would be in no way survivable.
Missile *strike* platform, it would be less useful in air combat.
Yep it’s a different fish.. essentially have both. Use this as a lower cost attritional unit. Brontanax at 25 million is not attritional at all.
Is it cheap because it has got next to no sensors on board and they all come as expensive “extras” that go on the pylons?