The Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) has reached another milestone with the launch of a new consortium, bringing together defence electronics champions from the UK, Italy and Japan to deliver the advanced sensing and communications backbone of the future fighter.
Unveiled in London on 9 September, the GCAP Electronics Evolution (G2E) consortium will see Leonardo UK, Leonardo’s Electronics Division in Italy, ELT Group and Mitsubishi Electric work together on the Integrated Sensing and Non-Kinetic Effects & Integrated Communications Systems (ISANKE & ICS).
The grouping will act in readiness to receive a contract from Edgewing, the joint venture between BAE Systems, Leonardo and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co. Ltd.
According to the group, the formation of G2E “represents substantial progress at an industrial level and reinforces the partners’ long-term commitment to GCAP.”
At the press conference, Andrew Howard, Leonardo UK’s Director Future Combat Air, underlined the transformative nature of the work: “The essence of what it’s trying to be delivering is sixth generation. The really transformative step is sixth generation. It is a profound integration of sensing and communications to create greater capability.”
Howard explained the thinking behind the new consortium name: “What we’ve chosen is GCAP Electronics Evolution, because what we recognise is that evolution is the essence of what we’ll be delivering, a constant spiral of technical capability from software and firmware throughout the product life cycle.”
Pietro Vanotti, Senior Vice President for Future Combat Air System Programmes at Leonardo’s Electronics Division in Italy, stressed that the scale of the endeavour required multinational cooperation: “No more a single country, a single industry, can face with such a giant development. Since the beginning we understood our role was to sit down together, harmonise our capabilities, and find synergies to create something better than the sum of its parts.” He added that communications would be “the glue that make all the sensor capable to work as a single sensor, connecting different platforms across the battlespace.”
For Ing. Alberto De Arcangelis, Senior Vice President at ELT Group, “Next Generation” means more than improved performance: “Next Generation does not mean only that we are going to develop a product with next generation functions. It means being fast in the development, complying with tough timelines, and securing through-life upgradability.”
He described how the consortium would deliver this through shared engineering: “Most of the development activities will be performed by joint integrated teams. Engineers from all four companies will work shoulder-to-shoulder in co-located teams, providing the best mix of skills and ensuring freedom of action and modification for each nation.”
Tatsuya Hirao, General Manager of the F-X Programme at Mitsubishi Electric, called the venture a landmark for Japan’s defence industry: “Participating in this dynamic consortium is a milestone, not only to bring our own heritage in advanced sensing and communications, but also to learn from the remarkable experience of our partners, by literally working around the clock across continents.”
Howard noted that the collaboration was moving beyond strategy to practical engineering: “Our MELCO colleagues are arriving in the UK, joining my team in Luton. That isn’t a person coming here to strategise or talk work share, that’s a person coming here to get on with some engineering.”
The consortium has signed its agreement as a precursor to receiving the first international contract, which Howard described as “the beginning of the next chapter.”
With GCAP aiming to deliver an operational sixth-generation fighter by 2035, the partners pushed the need for both speed and resilience. As De Arcangelis put it: “Next Generation means a superior understanding of the battlespace scenario, enabled through full integration of all the sensors and communications functions, with state-of-the-art data fusion and the newest artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.”
The GCAP Electronics Evolution consortium now joins Edgewing and other industrial groupings in shaping one of the most ambitious multinational defence programmes underway today. For all the technical language of integration, data fusion and digital engineering, the message was clear: the future of combat air will be written not by one nation alone, but by partners willing to share knowledge, risks and ambition. In that collective effort lies the promise of a fighter designed for a battlespace yet to be defined.
They also confirmed that each nation will have a specific avionics demonstrator aircraft – the current British Excalibur 757, an Italian system based on a business jet and a Japanese aircraft built off a Kawasaki C-2 cargo jet.
Good that progress is being made.
I just hope France and Germany are kept at arm’s length.
Germany can buy them only. This ac will be a world beater….
It’ll be very good. I’m not sure about ‘world-beater’, given its been a very long time since the UK, Italy or Japan produced an aircraft that was significantly ahead of pack. World-beating subsystems, perhaps, but the final jet will probably still lag behind Chinese and American systems.
Brilliant. Feels like there is momentum just wonder if it is enough to satisfy Japan.
The words ‘revolutionary’ and ‘evolution’ fill me with dread when you look at how ambitious the timescales to deliver this aircraft is! All the same, wish them well and fingers crossed all is well behind the scenes.