{"id":4279,"date":"2026-07-22T13:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T13:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/4279\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T13:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T13:42:08","slug":"uks-bae-enters-uncrewed-fighter-competition-with-brontanax-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/4279\/","title":{"rendered":"UK\u2019s BAE enters uncrewed fighter competition with \u2018Brontanax\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

FARNBOROUGH, England \u2014 BAE Systems revealed a new unmanned fighter jet on Wednesday, boosting Britain\u2019s entry into one of the defense industry\u2019s hottest and most fiercely contested markets.<\/p>\n

The U.K.\u2019s biggest defense company showcased a model of its new jet, Brontanax, derived from the ancient Greek words for thunder and king, at the Farnborough Airshow. It is about the size of a Hawk trainer and would be ready to start flight testing next year, BAE said.<\/p>\n

As the global threat level rises and western nations re-arm, defense 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<\/a>, with Airbus, Boeing, Anduril and General Atomics among a growing number of companies competing for business at Farnborough in a sector expected to expand rapidly.<\/p>\n

Often described as \u201cloyal wingmen,\u201d CCAs are designed to fly alongside piloted aircraft and are expected to cost roughly a third as much as a traditional fighter jet.<\/p>\n

Crowded marketplace<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s new Defence Secretary Wes Streeting, who was appointed on Monday, said it was a \u201cgroundbreaking moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will adopt this as our operational concept demonstrator, and we\u2019re going to get it in the air in 2027,\u201d he said at the airshow.<\/p>\n

BAE has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in its CCA, pushing ahead without the government co-investment which usually underpins new platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve put our money where our mouth is,\u201d CEO Charles Woodburn told Reuters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could see where the market was going,\u201d he added, saying he hopes to secure a U.K. 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 England. It could enter service by 2030, BAE said.<\/p>\n

That timeline compares to Boeing\u2019s MQ-28 Ghost Bat, on display at Farnborough, which has already started flight testing, and could be flying for Australia by 2028.<\/p>\n

BAE said its CCA offered more stealth than rivals and it was aiming for it to have 70% to 80% of the capabilities of a fighter jet and 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 BAE looking at non-military suppliers to help with the build. <\/p>\n

Britain said in its defense investment plan earlier in July that it would spend an initial \u00a3300 million ($401 million) to launch a sovereign CCA program it has named Storm Fighter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FARNBOROUGH, England \u2014 BAE Systems revealed a new unmanned fighter jet on Wednesday, boosting Britain\u2019s entry into one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[299,831,2520,634,14,636,627,452,2474,2461,1723],"class_list":["post-4279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-bae-systems","tag-britain","tag-cca","tag-circulated-defense-news","tag-defence-industry","tag-defense-news","tag-dn-dnr","tag-drones","tag-england","tag-farnborough","tag-unmanned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}