{"id":4500,"date":"2026-04-02T15:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/4500\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T15:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:10:07","slug":"money-starts-flowing-for-new-gcap-fighter-as-britain-sorts-out-finances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/4500\/","title":{"rendered":"Money starts flowing for new GCAP fighter, as Britain sorts out finances"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROME \u2014 Italy, Japan and the U.K. have signed a stopgap contract to keep work going on their joint GCAP fighter program for three months, giving the U.K. time to free up more funding.<\/p>\n

The joint program office created by the three nations announced the signing of a \u00a3686 million ($906 million) development contract on Thursday with Edgewing, the joint venture set up to develop the sixth-generation jet by local champions BAE Systems, Leonardo, and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co. Ltd. (JAIEC).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u00a3686 million contract invests in key design and engineering activities and enables the trilateral partnership to build momentum and accelerate pace of delivery,\u201d the tri-government GCAP agency said.<\/p>\n

Edgewing\u2019s first contract follows growing concern over delays in funding caused by ongoing uncertainty over the U.K.\u2019s Defense Investment Plan, which was due to contain GCAP cash.<\/p>\n

RELATED\"\"<\/p>\n

The plan was due to be completed last year, but has yet to be published amid a public spending crunch and a reported \u00a328 billion funding gap in the U.K. defense budget.<\/p>\n

That has left programs like GCAP under a cloud since the first contract with Edgewing was due to be signed off last year. Japanese officials have said they are worried GCAP delivery will be pushed beyond the scheduled date in 2035.<\/p>\n

A source on the program told Defense News the new contract is a \u201cbridge\u201d allowing work to continue until the end of June, when it is hoped the U.K. spending plan will be complete and a second, larger contract can be signed.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s contract is tri-national, with the U.K. contributing, and designed to keep the program on schedule,\u201d said the source.<\/p>\n

RELATED\"\"<\/p>\n

Ahead of the completion of the Defense Investment Plan, the U.K. last month handed Leonardo a \u00a31 billion contract to build 23 AW149 helicopters at the firm\u2019s Yeovil plant in the U.K. to ward off closure of the plant.<\/p>\n

Referring to the Edgewing deal, a spokesman for the joint venture said, \u201cWith the signing of this international contract, Edgewing is now fully empowered to drive the program forward as its industrial lead. Our priority is to ensure that engineering work continues to meet planned milestones and the business continues to ramp-up according to our projections.\u201d<\/p>\n

To date Italy, the U.K. and Japan have created separate funding for the program. The new contract is the first time they have signed a single contract with Edgewing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time in history that responsibility for the technical design and development of a combat aircraft program has been fully vested in a new international prime contractor, and we are making every effort to live up to this responsibility.\u201d said the Edgewing spokesman.<\/p>\n

Masami Oka, GCAP Agency Chief Executive said, \u201cThis contract is an important moment for GCAP, as activities previously conducted under three nations\u2019 contracts will now be carried out as part of a fully-fledged international program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Kington is the Italy correspondent for Defense News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME \u2014 Italy, Japan and the U.K. have signed a stopgap contract to keep work going on their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,2615,2616,2610,2612,2611,411,2613,5,2614],"class_list":{"0":"post-4500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-circulated-defense-news","10":"tag-defense-news","11":"tag-dn-dnr","12":"tag-gcap","13":"tag-italy","14":"tag-japan","15":"tag-sixth-generation-fighter","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-warplane"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116335753525661305","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}