Royal Air Force News Friday, August 7, 2026 P14
Feature Global Combat Air
Team Tempest With tensions rising across Europe and the Pacific, the race is on to get the RAF’s first sixth-generation fighter airborne THE GOVERNMENT has pledged an extra £15 billion in defence funding to help secure Britain’s Tempest Global Combat Air Programme. The project to build the RAF’s sixthgeneration fighter is to receive £8 billion over the next four years, while the UK’s drone programme will receive £5 billion in funding. In the past, procurements like this would take decades to deliver. But tensions caused by the Ukraine war and a resurgent China mean the three partner nations behind Tempest want the aircraft deployed by 2035. Chief of the Defence Staff, ACM Sir Rich Knighton, said: “The Strategic Defence Review will invest in defence over the coming years to deliver and build the integrated force the nation needs.” Defence chiefs have also pledged to raise spending on munitions and weapons to £11 billion, including long-range strike weapons, low-cost cruise missiles, and one-way UAVs. £80 billion The announcement will see an increase in defence funding to almost £80 billion a year by 2029, or 2.7 per cent of GDP. Central to all this is the collaboration between Britain, Italy and Japan on one of the most secret military projects in the world. The Tempest programme will build a manned stealth jet of the future capable of managing swarms of drones. For Britain and Italy, the need for speed is being driven by the threat from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In Japan, meanwhile, the concern is China’s designs on Taiwan. Thousands of engineers from Britain’s BAE Systems, Italy’s Leonardo and the Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co. have been seconded to the project’s HQ in Reading to progress the programme.
CDS: ACM Sir Rich Knighton
It was feared Tempest would be scrapped or scaled down to make up shortfalls in the defence budget amid recent political uncertainty. But now the MOD has awarded a contract extension worth £708 million to BAE Systems to
progress the aircraft’s development. Under the deal BAE will deliver and integrate UK technology and develop capability, including software, digital networks, digital engineering and physical infrastructure, collaborating with Team
Tempest industry partners and the wider supply chain. The jet will use a modular architecture with older technologies swapped for new ones as they emerge.