The United Kingdom, Japan and Italy will jointly build one of the world’s most advanced fighter jets by 2035, in their first trilateral military program to expand their defense capabilities to face growing security risks from China and Russia.
The Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) is being developed at the same time as a rival Franco-German-Spanish project, which has been the subject of political and industrial tensions between the three parties.
Under the terms of the agreement struck this Friday (9), the United Kingdom and Italy will merge their existing Combat Air Future program, known as Tempest, with the Japanese project FX. The three countries will share development costs, estimated at tens of billions of dollars, but a final decision on exact contributions will be reached after a joint assessment of costs and national budgets.
“Working together in a spirit of equal partnership, we will share the costs and benefits of this investment in our people and technologies,” the leaders of the three countries said in a joint statement. “Importantly, the program will subsidize the sovereign capacity of the three countries to design, produce and upgrade cutting-edge air combat capabilities to be extended into the future.”
The announcement was accompanied by a recreation of the new planes flying over Mount Fuji, London and Rome.
The deal, which took years of negotiations, marks an unprecedented shift in Japan’s stance. For years, the Asian country worked exclusively with American partners to equip itself with major military hardware, but it is now looking to forge deeper security ties with a range of allies. The reason would be the need to prepare for an eventual war with China over Taiwan.
The fighter jet is also part of Japan’s growing defense ambitions. The country’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, said this week that the government intends to set aside US$315 billion (R$1.65 trillion) for its five-year defense budget – a 57% increase over the last period.
People with knowledge of the matter said Tokyo’s decision to form the new partnership was due to growing fears that the Japanese defense sector will not be able to develop modern weapons and military equipment if it remains dependent on the US alone. That’s because Americans tend to keep their cutting-edge technology to themselves.
Defense Ministry officials said Japan will continue to cooperate closely with the US, pointing out that the choice of the UK and Italy as partners was made only because Washington did not have the same timeline for the development of its next fighter jet.
“The United States supports Japan’s security and defense cooperation with like-minded allies and partners,” the US Department of Defense said in a joint statement with Japan’s Ministry of Defense.
Britain’s collaboration with Italy and France was welcomed by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Friday. For him, the partnership is evidence that “the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions are indivisible”.
The UK has been looking to strengthen relations with the Pacific region, especially with the so-called Aukus initiative, in which London, Washington and Canberra agreed to collaborate around nuclear submarine technology.
But the UK’s foreign and defense policy doctrine, known as the “integrated review” and released in 2021, is being rewritten by the British government to reflect the challenges created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The original text was announced as being a “British diversion towards the Pacific”, but in light of the conflict in Ukraine it is likely that the revised document represents a kind of rapprochement with Europe. The UK has committed £2bn over an initial four-year period to the Tempest programme, crucial to maintaining jobs and UK air combat skills once the Eurofighter Typhoon rolls out of service.
The new program will be led by the largest defense companies in each of the three countries: BAE Systems in the UK; Leonardo, in Italy; and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan. The three companies have already been collaborating in a number of critical areas, including propulsion and radar technologies.
Now the three countries will collaborate to define the concept of the main jet, which they say will be equipped with “advanced sensors, cutting-edge weapons and an innovative data system”, with the aim of launching the development phase in 2024.
The UK and Japan said the door was open for other countries to join the programme. It is not yet clear whether Sweden, which since 2019 has been less involved, wants to deepen its participation in the partnership.
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