Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) UK-Japan-Italy

2 manned platforms (some version of a high-low mix) emerging from this project appears highly unlikely (the “low” part of any mix appears likely to be filled by unmanned “loyal wingmen”).

It appears all but certain that the UK, Japanese and Italian airforces will go with the same manned platform/ airframe and it will be a compromise of their various requirements. While we are likely dealing with a larger airframe than a Typhoon it’s not likely to be that much bigger or massively longer range; that’s just a given given the need for internal weapon carriage and to maintain range etc.
There isn’t the money or gap for the project to also do a light weight version. If Sweden decides to go for a lighter weight aircraft they could partner with this project team or with their French/German/Spanish competitor to share some of the underlying technology but it will in practice be a separate project (and it would probably make more sense for Sweden to just join one of the these 2 multinational projects and accept a slightly larger airframe than they otherwise may have gone for).

The appears to be an undercurrent among some contributors here suggesting (based on special insight/ briefings) that this project is really overwhelmingly UK, with Japan and Italy are just accepting a pre-existing UK design and only contributing relatively token technology, etc.
That appears wildly unlikely given (1) why would Japan and Italy agree to that, (2) if anything like this was remotely or even partially true it would be ruinous politically and for the project itself for anyone on the UK side to be bragging about it.
Assuming it is successful the manned aircraft that emerges from this project will be a product of, and compromise between, the UK, Japan and Italy requirements and industries. That is the necessary nature of any successful long term partnership/ relationship, including of this kind.
 
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kaiserd said:
2 manned platforms (some version of a high-low mix) emerging from this project appears highly unlikely (the “low” part of any mix appears likely to be filled by unmanned “loyal wingmen”).... There isn’t the money or gap for the project to also do a light weight version.
Click to expand...
The point is that lots of potential customers for the overall system, with adjuncts and effectors, might want/only be able to afford, a differently optimised core manned platform. The shifting emphasis away from 'loyal wingmen' to smaller adjuncts would make that even more attractive. Designing and building an airframe is the cheap bit!
 
kaiserd said:
The appears to be an undercurrent among some contributors here suggesting (based on special insight/ briefings) that this project is really overwhelmingly UK, with Japan and Italy are just accepting a pre-existing UK design and only contributing relatively token technology, etc.
That appears wildly unlikely given (1) why would Japan and Italy agree to that, (2) if anything like this was remotely or even partially true it would be ruinous politically and for the project itself for anyone on the UK side to be bragging about it.
Assuming it is successful the manned aircraft that emerges from this project will be a product of, and compromise between, the UK, Japan and Italy requirements and industries. That is the necessary nature of any successful long term partnership/ relationship, including of this kind.
Click to expand...
That's true. But that doesn't mean that every element needs to be trinational. Concepting and configuration design does not need to be, especially since it is based on all three requirements. A UK airframe design can still be a throughly trinational aircraft - a wrapper around core technologies that are far from 'token technology'. That configuration is little more than an envelope that will incorporate jointly designed powerplants, a jointly produced radar, the Anglo-Italian-Japanese Jaguar universal radio frequency sensor technology, Anglo-Italian ISANKE and EW (incorporating Japanese kit and tech), perhaps a Japanese AAM, etc.
 
By having the same engines and more or less similar avionics, you can save some money.

But the cost of designing two different airframes, fitting right-sized components into them, and making sure they and all the softwares work OK in every conceivable operating condition cannot be avoided, however. Millions of man-hours of testing.

The F-4J and RA-5C below are the example of two different airframes with two different radars powered by the same two J79 engines.

741F4CF3-65D3-4E02-ACA9-02495A87A4ED.jpeg
 
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Jackonicko said:
The point is that lots of potential customers for the overall system, with adjuncts and effectors, might want/only be able to afford, a differently optimised core manned platform. The shifting emphasis away from 'loyal wingmen' to smaller adjuncts would make that even more attractive. Designing and building an airframe is the cheap bit!
Click to expand...
That's really an argument for designing the wider system to be interoperable with multiple core platform types; e.g. F-35 as operated by Italy, Japan and UK. Plugging your existing core platform into a new system is much more affordable than building a new airframe from scratch.

Airframe research, development, test and evaluation for this sort of combat aircraft is still many bilions / tens of billions, and over a decade for thousands of people. This cannot be considered trivial or cheap
 
red admiral said:
Airframe research, development, test and evaluation for this sort of combat aircraft is still many bilions / tens of billions, and over a decade for thousands of people. This cannot be considered trivial or cheap
Click to expand...
True and worth it.
 
red admiral said:
Jackonicko said:
The point is that lots of potential customers for the overall system, with adjuncts and effectors, might want/only be able to afford, a differently optimised core manned platform. The shifting emphasis away from 'loyal wingmen' to smaller adjuncts would make that even more attractive. Designing and building an airframe is the cheap bit!
Click to expand...
That's really an argument for designing the wider system to be interoperable with multiple core platform types; e.g. F-35 as operated by Italy, Japan and UK. Plugging your existing core platform into a new system is much more affordable than building a new airframe from scratch.

Airframe research, development, test and evaluation for this sort of combat aircraft is still many bilions / tens of billions, and over a decade for thousands of people. This cannot be considered trivial or cheap
Click to expand...

Not really. For one thing, a GCAP Core Platform Lite would not be aimed at existing F-35 operators, but rather at those flying Gripens, F-16s, et al. For another, by 2035, the F-35 will itself be looking a bit 'tired' - its AESA will be a generation behind Tempest's, for example.
 
#81 k's voice of reason.
Some silly commentators (never the professionals) portrayed Concorde and A300B as French, others, that both were based on Brit designs. The Tornado that emerged from early, 6 Nation MRCA talks was no longer single seat/single engine, because "UK imposed its will".

None of the above. What actually happens is that, once the politicos have organised Launch $, the team Tasked to make it happen addresses, no more, no less: what is in the best interests of the Project? No Member can prevail with: "my way is the way we do it." Because that's the only way of settling disputes. Try to bludgeon your view...you will soon be talking to yourself.

3 F-104G Users (LW/MfG/ItAF) had to grow the new skill of Wizzo (back seater) to operate Tornado: Belg/Canada/Neths chose not to, so decamped to single seat F-things...to fulfil roles that Tornado could/should not. Users wishing to join GCAP will either: qualify competence to be entrusted with (German term: ) noble work, or will settle for (old term: ) make-to-print, while observing/learning R&D.

The early contacts on MRCA between Brit and FRG persons fresh from TSR.2 and AVS came quickly to the consensus that they had equal expertise in managing cancellations...never again!
 
An interesting presentation about Sixth-Generation Fighters, and what they may do in the future. Posting this here because GCAP (And formerly Tempest and F-X) has a topic in there. (I already posted this on both US Sixth Generation and FCAS programs)

This was posted 2 days ago, on December 24
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPrWm6fWuaM
 
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Jackonicko said:
red admiral said:
Jackonicko said:
The point is that lots of potential customers for the overall system, with adjuncts and effectors, might want/only be able to afford, a differently optimised core manned platform. The shifting emphasis away from 'loyal wingmen' to smaller adjuncts would make that even more attractive. Designing and building an airframe is the cheap bit!
Click to expand...
That's really an argument for designing the wider system to be interoperable with multiple core platform types; e.g. F-35 as operated by Italy, Japan and UK. Plugging your existing core platform into a new system is much more affordable than building a new airframe from scratch.

Airframe research, development, test and evaluation for this sort of combat aircraft is still many bilions / tens of billions, and over a decade for thousands of people. This cannot be considered trivial or cheap
Click to expand...

Not really. For one thing, a GCAP Core Platform Lite would not be aimed at existing F-35 operators, but rather at those flying Gripens, F-16s, et al. For another, by 2035, the F-35 will itself be looking a bit 'tired' - its AESA will be a generation behind Tempest's, for example.
Click to expand...
Not if the F-35 is getting a new AESA as appears to be the case (APG-85)
 
I think one of its strengths will be in simply being a twin-engined aircraft with better performance. Those are weak points of the F-35 for many prospective customers, although how much they matter is debatable.
 
Forest Green said:
I think one of its strengths will be in simply being a twin-engined aircraft with better performance. Those are weak points of the F-35 for many prospective customers, although how much they matter is debatable.
Click to expand...
Few if any customers will care about 2 versus 1 engine (indeed everything else being equal many will prefer the 1 versus 2 from a cost perspective).
Additionally the airframe that emerges from this project may not have particularly superior flight performance than the F-35 in terms of max speed, altitude etc.
What many suspect is that it may aim for larger internal loads and possibly range, plus next-gen avionics (though as noted the F-35 may/will be updated to “keep up with the Jones”).
It will be interesting if engine developments could/ will allow for this to be combined with performance aspects like some super cruise capacity (re: this project, though in theory a re-engining of the F-35 could also do so, but less likely in an airframe less optimised for super cruise capacity).
 
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kaiserd said:
Few if any customers will care about 2 versus 1 engine
Click to expand...
Disagree. How many of the recently planned or built stealth aircraft are single-engined, and how many are twin-engined?

NGAD, GCAP, FCAS, Su-57, J-20, J-31, F-22, TFX, KFX, AMCA.

vs

F-35 and Su-75.
 
kaiserd said:
2 manned platforms (some version of a high-low mix) emerging from this project appears highly unlikely (the “low” part of any mix appears likely to be filled by unmanned “loyal wingmen”).
Click to expand...
Loyal wingman by definition isn't "lo", it's something else entirely.
LW are neither designed nor capable of that.

Forest Green said:
Disagree. How many of the recently planned or built stealth aircraft are single-engined, and how many are twin-engined?
Click to expand...
Alternative interpretation - in an era when fighters were mostly used for knight jousts and parades, bigger and more impressive aircraft won over rationality.
Stealth doesn't impose any particular engine number requirement, it's nothing more and nothing less than a way you design aircraft.
 
Ainen said:
Alternative interpretation - in an era when fighters were mostly used for knight jousts and parades, bigger and more impressive aircraft won over rationality.
Stealth doesn't impose any particular engine number requirement, it's nothing more and nothing less than a way you design aircraft.
Click to expand...
You could maybe use that logic for the F-22, but for the rest of them, which were conceived this century (post-Desert Storm), it's invalid.

I don't know anyone who wouldn't prefer if the F-35 had the same avionics, stealth and modernity but was a little more like the F-22 besides.
 
There’s not been any great return to 2 engines because 2 engines are intrinsically better than 1 or really anything like concerns of the reliability of 1 engine.

It’s about the availability of specific engines and the total thrust needed to meet specific requirements.

This is a a story of next generation engines evolving out of the current engines in terms of size and thrust range.

Re: the US/ Western/ Western aligned countries aircraft the main “fighter” engines are evolutions out from the F404, F119 families (with Turkey being the outlier with the F110 for a larger heavier airframe). Taking South Korea as an example; my understand is that the F135 (or F119) wasn’t on offer/ available.
So to proceed with an aircraft approx in the size/weight/performance class as they intended they had little choice but to go with a twin using the F414 (or one of the European fighter engines in the same class).
Similar decision making processes for the other aircraft programs referenced above.

Re: the next generation fighters and their engines while they may bring a lot of new technology to the table they are still to a large extent evolutions of what came before.
For example their is considerably less risk with a 40k-50k new generation engine evolving out of from existing work in the F135 class than also scaling it up for substantially larger single engine use (say approx 75k). And there is more scope for using the smaller engine (in single and twin or even four engined designs).
 
There's never been a great return to twin-engines, because there's never been a great exodus from twin-engines.
 
Could be something or nothing, but the decks could be getting cleared for Swedish involvement in GCAP. Or perhaps Sweden re-committing to the ex-FCAS work after Saab said they were pretty much on the sidelines.

Could the Swedes have realised this is the only game in town for them?

Japan, Sweden sign deal for possible GCAP co-operation

Japan and Sweden have signed an agreement that could enable the Scandinavian country to play a role in the new Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP).
www.janes.com
 
timmymagic said:
Could be something or nothing, but the decks could be getting cleared for Swedish involvement in GCAP. Or perhaps Sweden re-committing to the ex-FCAS work after Saab said they were pretty much on the sidelines.

Could the Swedes have realised this is the only game in town for them?

Japan, Sweden sign deal for possible GCAP co-operation

Japan and Sweden have signed an agreement that could enable the Scandinavian country to play a role in the new Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP).
www.janes.com
Click to expand...

I would like Sweden to return to the GCAP program, it was a big mistake for them to leave.
 
I must admit I'm confused what the difference is between FCAS and GCAP? Surely they are the same thing more or less (depending on the bells and whistles added)?
Sounds like the Saudi's want the "Tempest" fighter - which surely will be the manned fighter element of GCAP anyway assuming there are not two different airframes.
 
Some clarification?
breakingdefense.com

Despite Saudi statement, KSA not joining UK-led FCAS program - at least not yet - Breaking Defense

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia minister of defense Khalid bin Salman said he signed a letter of intent with his UK counterpart regarding the KSA's participation in the Future Air Capabilities Program (FCAS).
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com

www.reuters.com

Saudi, UK ministers agree to study combat air cooperation -Saudi agency

Saudi and British defence ministers have agreed to study future co-operation on combat air capabilities and potential industrial projects, the Saudi state news agency reported.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 

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FighterJock said:

Wow. How different the new GCAP design is from the initial Tempest, I like what I am seeing at present.
Click to expand...
Shades of FOAS there around the rear.
 
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Yes that wing does look FOAS-ish. Moveable control surfaces too, interesting given the work going on with MAGMA and vectored-thrust for flight control.
Looks better than Tempest - though of course a model is a model and who knows what the real thing looks like, but it looks good.
 
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