The three nations made important steps forward this year, establishing equal work sharing, locations and coordination of the different areas of GCAP, with the objective of cutting in half timeline and costs.
As recently reported, the three national industry leads participating to the Global Combat Aircraft Programme (GCAP), BAE Systems, Leonardo and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co (JAIEC), reached an agreement for the business joint venture which will work on the program. In a briefing to reporters, Leonardo was able to provide some insights and more details about GCAP.
Lorenzo Mariani, Co-General Manager of Leonardo, emphasized that 2024 has been fundamental for the continuation of the works on GCAP. In fact, in addition to the agreement for the joint venture, this year allowed to make clarity about the program’s scheme, work locations, work sharing and national contracts.
Work sharing
The work sharing is based around the capabilities that each of the three countries, U.K., Italy and Japan, can provide. The activities will be localized in the three nations, with personnel of each nation working in all the work sites. Also, a ‘common working environment’, already tested by Leonardo in facilities both in the U.K. and Italy, will allow an easier collaboration between all parties involved in the project.
The equal sharing of the work between the three nations means that all decisions will be taken together and shared, with a continuous exchange between the partners. However, even with this constraint, the two principles on which GCAP is based, the freedom of action of the users and the freedom of modification, remain valid.
As mentioned before, personnel from all the partner nations will work on each system together. This means that each nation will have its own personnel at each of the work locations chosen for GCAP, again in the spirit of the equal sharing, with a main location in each nation in addition to the other facilities and the headquarters to be established in the U.K.
Italian participation
Guglielmo Maviglia, Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) Director for Leonardo, told reporters that Italy will have the leadership on the flight system, weapon management system and autonomy components of the mission management/mission system. Maviglia emphasized that leadership doesn’t mean that Italy will work alone on these systems, but it will be the one coordinating the work.
In fact, each nation brings its experience and know-how which might be different from others. As an example, Mariani mentioned the low observability, saying that BAE Systems might have more experience in that sector thanks to the F-35, compared to Leonardo, and that agreements would be needed to share that experience with the other partners. The same would happen in other areas.
🔴#LDO_PR BAE Systems (UK), #Leonardo (Italy), and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co Ltd (JAIEC), have reached an agreement to form a new company under a business joint venture for the Global Combat Air Programme (#GCAP), subject to regulatory approvals.… pic.twitter.com/McLv1Zwuw2
— Leonardo (@Leonardo_live) December 13, 2024
The work will not be concentrated in a single location, but it will rather distributed in all the facilities available. As mentioned by Maviglia, it is unimaginable to focus the work only in one site, so it will be distributed in all the sites which worked so far on the project, preserving the mission and expertise of each one.
Obviously, more personnel will be needed for that to work. In fact, Mariani said that 6,000 people have already been hired to work on GCAP by Leonardo only, and thousands more will be hired in future as the program progresses. This is even more important as GCAP and the Typhoon program will run at the same time, with the latter continuing at least until 2050 thanks to new orders and the Long-Term Evolution.
Mariani also mentioned the collaboration with the Academia and Universities not only for the research, but also to orient the syllabi towards the kind of engineers that will be needed by industry in ten years. Cyber-security engineers will be among them, as a fully interconnected system like GCAP will exchange huge quantities of data, so cyber protection and data management are key issues. The same applies to the facilities on the ground.
Final assembly lines
One of the topics already being discussed is the production plants, with Mariani mentioning that everyone wants a final assembly line. This is related to the fact that whoever gets a final assembly line also gets benefits in terms of logistical integrated support and control over the program.
The need for more final assembly lines is already a fact, as a single line for Europe and one for Japan has been considered to be not a viable option. Also, Mariani mentioned that it is “not even a hypothesis that Italy will not have a final assembly line,” and there are already important plans for the Torino-Caselle facility where Leonardo already produces the Eurofighter Typhoon and the C-27J Spartan.
#ICYMI
Looking back on @FIAFarnborough when the three nations of the #GlobalCombatAir Programme unveiled the new concept model of the next generation combat aircraft…
🇬🇧🇯🇵🇮🇹 #FIA2024https://t.co/Dd4Vel298x pic.twitter.com/ijvRyaR3xW
— GlobalCombatAir (@GlobalCombatAir) July 30, 2024
Future partners
Regarding future partners, the United Kingdom is looking for Tier 2 partners around the world, in a similar manner to the F-35 program. A possible interest has been demonstrated towards Australia, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that the U.K. is in talks with Australia, urging the country to evaluate a possible partnership.
As of today, there are no other partners yet. Saudi Arabia has asked to be included and is now being evaluated by the three nations. In fact, whoever wants to become a partner for GCAP needs to provide not only funds, but also an industrial capability, said Mariani. Moreover, any new entry must not alter the timeline, minimizing the disruption towards the 2035 goal.
Reuters already reported that Saudi Arabia was among the possible candidates, with the country later asking to be evaluated. Royal Saudi Air Force Maj Gen Hamed Alamri, Director of Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chairman of Committee of Future Capabilities of Armed Forces, recently confirmed the engagement to join the program, mentioning that the objective is a full partnership, rather than a Tier 2 one.
Germany has been a good political and industrial partner with the Tornado and Eurofighter programs, so it would be a welcomed addition should it decide to leave the Future Combat Air System program for GCAP. A merge of the two has been judged highly unlikely, at least in the short term, because of both political and industrial reasons.
Testbeds
Since the U.K. recently unveiled its Boeing 757-based Excalibur testbed, we asked about new possible testbed which could also involve Typhoons. While Excalibur is a British national initiative, Maviglia said that all nations are evaluating the possibility to have testbeds, including Italy.
Mariani further added that the definition of the testbeds for GCAP is not yet mature, so it will evolve as the program progresses. However, he mentioned the Typhoon could be a good choice for a testbed because of its ongoing evolution and the systems developed for the LTE that are expected to be later integrated in the GCAP’s ISANKE & ICS (Integrated Sensing and Non-Kinetic Effects & Integrated Communications Systems).
These systems will be, obviously, tested on ground rigs at first, but then there would be the need for testbeds to perform flight testing. A flying testbed would be useful also for testing integration with the 6th generation aircraft and its family of systems.
Timeline
Since it has been mentioned that GCAP has an ambitious 2035 goal and the three nations are working to avoid disruptions to that goal, we also asked about the timeline. Maviglia admitted that the timeline to meet that goal is challenging and based on a series of assumptions.
Among these is the digitalization of the work, with the common working environment, digital twin, high power computing, and so on. These would ease the cooperation between the sites involved, even when they’re geographically distant from each other. The partners are currently working to confirm all the assumptions and finalize the timeline.
The final goal of this timeline is to cut in half the duration of the program, from the 20 years of legacy programs to 10-12 years, and its costs. The work has already brought some results, as the agreement for the joint venture was reached in a timespan of less than two years, compared to legacy programs which would have taken at least four years to do the same.
