Work is advancing on the UK’s BAE Systems-led sixth-generation fighter demonstrator, ahead of a first flight event anticipated before mid-2027.

Announced at the Farnborough air show last July as the UK’s first such platform since the Eurofighter-precursor EAP of the early 1980s, the supersonic platform will be used to de-risk some technologies destined for use in the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP). A joint project between Italy, Japan and the UK, that activity aims to deliver an operational sixth-generation fighter and supporting systems by 2035.

Paul Wilde, BAE’s head of Tempest, says “significant progress” has been made since the programme was revealed – at which point “more than half of the aircraft’s weight, including the fuselage and wings” was already in assembly or build.

“We have gone past the peak of the [manufacturing] programme,” Wilde said during the Royal Aeronautical Society’s FCAS25 Summit in London on 22 May, without providing further details or showing new images.

“It’s an opportunity for us to go and develop a number of capabilities… and to look at how we re-brigade some of the UK skills, and really try to push the de-risking element in support of the core GCAP programme,” Wilde says.

Examples run from supply chain and assembly innovation to the increased use of additive layer manufacturing technology, including in major structures.

“It gives us an opportunity to get started early… and if things go wrong, we can flush those out and not find out on the core [GCAP] platform,” the Ministry of Defence (MoD) engineering official overseeing the programme said at the same event.

Wilde says 14 test pilots have accumulated more than a combined 300h ‘flying’ the demonstrator – which will be powered by two Eurojet EJ200s from the Eurofighter Typhoon – in a simulator at BAE’s Warton site in Lancashire. “That’s a really significant amount,” he notes.

Describing the early experience, one of the project pilots involved states: “It is very much a combat air-type aircraft, and it flies in that sort of way. Why that gets really interesting is that sixth-generation platforms are considerably bigger [than current types]. They are not small, agile fighters any more, and yet we are able to generate through the very clever use of control laws something that is still very familiar.”

Pointing to the future fighter’s part within a broader system of systems – also to include unmanned autonomous collaborative platforms and an underpinning data network, the source stresses: “From a requirements space, it’s a vehicle for the military capability to be in a place it needs to be.”

And, once compared with the Future Combat Air System activity being advanced by France, Germany and Spain, and the US Air Force’s developmental Boeing F-47, they note: “We are all coming to the same conclusions.”

Wilde says full details around the demonstrator’s flight-test plan have yet to be finalised. “We know some of the testing that we are going to do,” he adds, with an example being validating expected aerodynamic performance around the jet’s engine intakes and serpentine ducting: a key feature enabling its low observable design characteristics.

“We are getting into more conversation about what more do we want to go and do. But the bigger programme hasn’t yet worked out what it needs us to go and fix and investigate,” he adds.

“It’s a case of going at a sensible pace to match the baseline programme, and keeping the options open,” another speaker notes.

While other UK programme officials participated in the conference, the MoD did not comment publicly about the GCAP activity, due to the expected near-term release of its Strategic Defence Review. The report will address the programme along with other activities in the combat air sector: namely the in-service Lockheed Martin F-35 and Typhoon.

However, Giandomenico Taricco, director commercial & corporate for the GCAP International Government Organisation (GIGO) – the body tasked with managing the programme – provided an update.

“GCAP is moving from a three-nation discussion to a single programme,” he says.

The GIGO structure was approved last December, alongside the terms for an industrial joint venture agreed by national champions BAE, Leonardo and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Both entities are based in Reading, Berkshire.

“We are trying to grow very quickly – we receive [new] people from the three nations almost every day. Our aim is to become relevant very soon, and to be very effective,” Taricco says.

“Everyone is putting in their best commitment. Our priority is collaboration and empowerment across the GIGO, the nations and industry. We put a lot of emphasis on open communication and mutual trust, and every day we are more convinced.”