London \u2013 Britain, Italy and Japan awarded a \u00a34.6 billion ($6.14 billion) contract to industry \u2060joint venture Edgewing to build the new Global Combat Air Program fighter jet, the U.K. government said on Friday, advancing the project to the next phase of development.<\/p>\n
After nine months of delays over its squeezed military budget, Britain \u200bcommitted on Tuesday \u00a38.6 billion over four years to GCAP, providing \u200cits share \u200cof the funding for the tri-nation project as part \u200bof efforts to boost defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Global Combat Air Program will give our pilots a cutting-edge stealth fighter jet. Signing this \u00a34.6 billion contract alongside \u2060Italy and Japan is a major step forward towards delivery,\u201d Luke Pollard, Britain\u2019s minister \u2060for defense readiness, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The contract award comes after a rival Franco-German fighter program collapsed in June, \u200bleaving European defense alliances in flux, \u2060and making it more likely that another country could seek to join GCAP.<\/p>\n
BAE Systems in Britain, Leonardo \u2060in Italy and Mitsubishi \u200bHeavy Industries in Japan are developing GCAP, a \u200bsixth-generation stealth fighter that the countries want ready by 2035.<\/p>\n
Through \u200bGCAP, also \u200cknown as Tempest in the U.K., the countries can share tens of billions of dollars in costs to build an advanced fighter jet and secure more orders. They will also look to \u200cinternational markets to boost sales.<\/p>\n
The Italian defense minister said in June that opening GCAP to other nations would help share that cost, and Leonardo said Germany would be a particularly valid partner given its expertise. Saudi \u200bArabia \u200band Canada have also looked at GCAP.<\/p>\n
Any GCAP expansion \u200bwould require the agreement of its three founding members, and executives \u2060have previously said there could be opportunities to join later at varying levels of involvement.<\/p>\n
The joint venture developing GCAP is named Edgewing, which is jointly owned by BAE, Leonardo and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement. \u200bIts headquarters are in Britain, with a CEO from Italy.<\/p>\n
BAE has previously said GCAP would be 3 to 4 meters longer than the Typhoon military jet and designed to fly a longer range.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London \u2013 Britain, Italy and Japan awarded a \u00a34.6 billion ($6.14 billion) contract to industry \u2060joint venture Edgewing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[360,2859,17858,4136,8,7839],"class_list":["post-52870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-defense","tag-fighter-jets","tag-gcap","tag-italy","tag-japan","tag-u-k"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}