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UK Defense Readiness Minister Luke Pollard says the CCA development program has been dubbed 'Storm Fighter.'
LONDON—The UK Royal Air Force’s new collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) program will act like a “guardian angel” and “attack dog” for crewed fighters, Defense Readiness Minister Luke Pollard says.
Announcing the £300 million ($405 million) development program will be called Storm Fighter at the Global Air and Space Chiefs Conference here on July 16, Pollard said that the initiative will be at the heart of the service’s effort to become Europe’s first sixth-generation air force. Storm Fighter will also help “lay the ground” for more defense exports, growth and cooperation with friendly nations, Pollard says.
Storm Fighter will “develop autonomous jets here in the UK, providing new levels of lethality and survivability for our crewed jets” and helping to maximize UK air power, Pollard tells delegates.
Defense chiefs had called for an acceleration in CCA development, recognizing the benefit of the increased mass and lethality they can bring in support of crewed platforms, as well as how they could enable a hybrid air wing on the UK’s two aircraft carriers.
Original planning had called for the development of a CCA in line with the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP), but UK Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Harv Smyth told Aviation Week in an earlier interview that he wants to demonstrate a system flying with a Eurofighter in 2027 and to have an operational capability by the end of the decade.
He also wants to see the CCAs adapted and enhanced several times by the time the GCAP enters service in the latter half of the 2030s.
The RAF had been a “big winner” from the Defense Investment Plan, published last month, Pollard says, with £31 billion earmarked for air and space programs with money for the GCAP development, upgrades for the Eurofighter Typhoon and additional F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Replacing combat aircraft entirely with uncrewed systems is “not the right lesson” from Russia’s war in Ukraine, Pollard adds, noting that the UK needs a “type of air power that only combat jets and deep strike can deliver.”
Pollard also reveals the RAF intercepted some 100 Iranian drones and missiles launched against allies in the region. The majority of these had been downed by RAF Regiment personnel launching surface-to-air missiles, while the others were downed by Eurofighters. A breakdown of the engagements has not been unveiled.
Pollard confirms the RAF is exploring adding a boom refueling capability for the service's Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport Voyager tankers, which are owned by the Airtanker joint venture between Airbus, Thales and infrastructure investor Equitix. Pollard says the discussions are being made possible by the upcoming end and potential renewal points for the Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft program in 2035. “I want us to be having a forward-facing approach to this, and that is also looking at what are the refueling types that we'll be using for GCAP and how do we effectively transition,” Pollard says.
Funding worth £360 million has also been set aside to launch the replacement for the BAE Systems Hawks used for advanced jet training and as the mount for the Red Arrows aerobatic team. Pollard says that money would not buy the fleet, but “build up the project and the capacity to start the competition for it.” He suggests part of the capital for the program, known as the Jet Trainer Service, could be enabled by funds from the private sector.
“There are billions of pounds of capital that are ready and willing to be invested in defense outside public sector investments, and we need to find investable opportunities that provide the efficiency and, importantly, over the lifetime of that service, the requirement for them to iterate and to improve things at a faster rate,” Pollard says.
The UK Defense Ministry is set to unveil a Defense Finance and Investment Strategy in the fall that would enable private sector program funding.
Funding provided through the DIP had not been enough to meet all expectations, Pollard concedes, but he insists there will be a reassessment of defense expenditure in the government’s next spending review in 2027, which would set out spending growth to the equivalent of 3% of GDP and to 3.5% by 2035. If more money becomes available, the DIP is “deliberately scalable,” he says, and could be adapted.
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