By Sarah Young <\/p>\n
FARNBOROUGH, England, July 22 (Reuters) – BAE Systems revealed a new unmanned fighter jet on Wednesday, boosting Britain’s entry into one of the defence industry’s hottest and most fiercely contested markets. <\/p>\n
The UK’s \u200cbiggest defence company showcased a model of its new jet, Brontanax, derived from the ancient Greek words \u200cfor thunder and king, at the Farnborough Airshow. It is about the size of a Hawk trainer and would be ready to start flight \u200btesting next year, BAE said. <\/p>\n
As the global threat level rises and western nations re-arm, defence chiefs say the lesson from the Ukraine war is clear: nations need to control the skies to avoid Ukrainian-style attritional trench warfare and that requires air forces to bulk up. <\/p>\n
BAE enters an increasingly crowded market for so-called Collaborative Combat Aircraft, with Airbus, Boeing, Anduril and General Atomics \u200camong a growing number of companies competing \u2060for business at Farnborough in a sector expected to expand rapidly. <\/p>\n
Often described as “loyal wingmen,” CCAs are designed to fly alongside piloted aircraft and are expected to cost roughly a third as \u2060much as a traditional fighter jet. <\/p>\n
CROWDED MARKETPLACE <\/p>\n
Britain’s new Defence Secretary Wes Streeting, who was appointed on Monday, said it was a “groundbreaking moment”. <\/p>\n
“We will adopt this as our operational concept demonstrator, and we’re going to get it in the air in 2027,” he said \u200bat \u200bthe airshow. <\/p>\n
BAE has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in its \u200bCCA, pushing ahead without the government co-investment which \u200cusually underpins new platforms. <\/p>\n
“We’ve put our money where our mouth is,” CEO Charles Woodburn told Reuters. <\/p>\n
“We could see where the market was going,” he added, saying he hopes to secure a UK order, and that other countries in Europe and the Middle East could follow, with some already showing an interest. <\/p>\n
BAE has developed Brontanax alongside the Royal Air Force, in a project dating back to 2022, and already has a fully assembled aircraft at its Warton facility in northwest \u200cEngland. It could enter service by 2030, BAE said. <\/p>\n
That timeline compares \u200bto Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat, on display at Farnborough, which has already \u200bstarted flight testing, and could be flying for \u200bAustralia by 2028. <\/p>\n
BAE said its CCA offered more stealth than rivals and it was aiming for \u200cit to have 70% to 80% of the \u200bcapabilities of a fighter jet \u200band to come in at under 25% of the cost, which could give it a price tag of around $25 million. <\/p>\n
Its open architecture and modular design will allow software upgrades and changes to easily be made, with \u200bBAE looking at non-military suppliers to help \u200cwith the build. <\/p>\n
Britain said in its defence investment plan earlier in July that it would spend an \u200binitial \u00a3300 million ($401.10 million) to launch a sovereign CCA programme it has named Storm Fighter. <\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7479 pounds) <\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Sarah Young; Editing by Joe Brock and Sharon Singleton) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sarah Young FARNBOROUGH, England, July 22 (Reuters) – BAE Systems revealed a new unmanned fighter jet on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21224],"tags":[21234,8160,13,27278,37897,5893],"class_list":["post-88527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bae","tag-bae","tag-bae-systems","tag-britain","tag-collaborative-combat-aircraft","tag-farnborough-airshow","tag-fighter-jet"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116966652816090825","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88527","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=88527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}