Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Contains threads on Royal Air Force equipment of the past, present and future.
Lord Jim
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

With the drastic reduction in the number of Fighter Wings and Airbases the Swedes have their aircraft have to cover a lot of airspace and quickly these days.

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Lord Jim wrote:With the drastic reduction in the number of Fighter Wings and Airbases the Swedes have their aircraft have to cover a lot of airspace and quickly these days.
Well, from 80 prepared (hard shelters, fuel) dispersal sites they have gone to exactly what we have (few, concentrated bases)... just that they are much closer to ballistic artillery missiles, that can go not-ballistic in the late phases, so as to complicate the defences (called Patriots, in Sweden's case).

Though the Ruskies have demonstrated that they can send nuclear bombers to take out the AF command center (so last century, but it is all about messaging), all it takes is two pairs of the new-gen Gripens with home-grown MADL and Meteors to circle in the airspace of a country that is much bigger than the UK - and they back it up with the flying radar/ comms node/ - just in case a few Iskandars get through thru the Patriots
- and that is the airspace covered
- Battle of Britain like there might be hundreds of Flankers making forays... but they won't be able to stay for long. So sorties vs. capability (in the area where it will be fought out) metered " by the minute"
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Lord Jim
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

Nice reply, though I always thought the Flanker had far more internal fuel than most western fighters exactly because it had to deal with the distances involved in defending the USSR, when it was designed. I have never seen a Flanker with under wing tanks, have you?

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Flanker has an impressive range, yes, but in an airsuperiority role this article
https://exoatmospheric.wordpress.com/20 ... hter-jets/
posits that the IAF is likely to move from the Flanker backbone (current) to something else...if so, could be quite relevant to the above:

"The Indian Air Force defined the operational role of the fighter jet to be Air Superiority, Air Defence, Air to Surface Operations, Reconnaissance, Maritime, EW missions and Buddy Refuelling etc.
[...]
The most intriguing fact that the IAF specified refuelling capability of NATO standard and Gallium Nitride (GaN) based technology used in AESA radar which is available only in European and American fighter jet indicate that the IAF does not indent or interested in Russia’s fighter jet in the recent RFI.
[...]

The requirements stipulating the use of GaN-based TRMs in the aircraft’s AESA radar seems to be a significant discerning factor. The Saab JAS 39 Gripen E seems to be leading the IAF’s latest fighter contest for now."

So the cross-over from Tempest, via Gripen, to what IAF will start to replace their Flankers with is a new twist
... and the volume (110 for starters) will up production volumes of any subsystems that will be shared to the theoretical Franco-German-Spanish level. From the foreseeable level that has so far been somewhat trailing.
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

Ares
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Ares »

It's been a long time.

Today in Japan, the defense committee meeting held by the ruling party(LDP) officially discussed the next-gen fighter for the first time and Defense Ministry suggested a detailed development schedule. According to that, the prototype production will be started in 2024, the mass production line will be built in 2031, and the first deployment will begin in 2035.

One of the important pieces of information that came out is we could co-develop the fighter's engine with the UK. Rolls Royce already expressed the willingness to cooperate with the high-power generator technology for Tempest at the DSEI Tokyo last year so, I guess some degree of cooperation may be decided.

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Roders96
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Ares wrote:It's been a long time.

Today in Japan, the defense committee meeting held by the ruling party(LDP) officially discussed the next-gen fighter for the first time and Defense Ministry suggested a detailed development schedule. According to that, the prototype production will be started in 2024, the mass production line will be built in 2031, and the first deployment will begin in 2035.

One of the important pieces of information that came out is we could co-develop the fighter's engine with the UK. Rolls Royce already expressed the willingness to cooperate with the high-power generator technology for Tempest at the DSEI Tokyo last year so, I guess some degree of cooperation may be decided.

Image
Very interesting indeed, what are the odds any mooted RR co-operation could be a stalking horse to drive down the price of an American alternative?

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SKB
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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They could use the jet engine fan from inside a Sony PlayStation 4. (Its certainly loud enough!) :mrgreen:

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Export-Centric Tempest Has Global Ambitions For Partners
Tony Osborne July 10, 2020

British combat aircraft Under current plans, the architecture of the future British combat aircraft should be decided this year. It is likely to look very different from the designs unveiled two years ago.

The UK is looking beyond Europe and its traditional partners as it pushes toward a critical milestone for the Tempest Future Combat Air System.

With deadlines looming to submit a business case for the initiative at the end of the year, the UK Defense Ministry and the Team Tempest industry consortium of BAE Systems, Leonardo, MBDA and Rolls-Royce—which are supporting the UK Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative (FCAS TI)—are working to mature technologies and develop a business model that will pave the way for how partner nations and industry will interact and combine their development efforts.

The aim is to develop a next-generation, low-cost combat aircraft that could be combined with additive capabilities such as unmanned loyal wingmen to replace fourth-generation platforms like the UK Royal Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoons or the Swedish Air Force’s early-model Saab Gripens in the mid-2030s, and to do it in at least half the time it took to bring the Eurofighter to front-line service.

The UK has global ambitions for the aircraft and is hoping it can build on its international relationships post-Brexit to find future partners and customers for the platform.

“What we are doing is talking to governments about what we’re doing. We are thinking about what their needs might be, and we are making sure that we can keep the door open for as long as possible in as many different ways as possible so they can partner with us in a meaningful way,” Richard Berthon, the UK Defense Ministry’s Combat Air Acquisition program director tells Aviation Week.

There are challenges ahead, however. The aftermath of the novel coronavirus pandemic is likely to cast a long shadow over public spending, while a review of UK foreign and defense policy may send ripples through plans for future defense capabilities. Yet defense and industry officials are confident that plans for Tempest can prevail through these challenging times.

“I’m confident that there’s a really strong understanding of the benefits of investing in Combat Air,” Berthon explained. “The message is well understood in terms of the benefits from international partnering for the industrial base, to investing more in research and development . . . as well as military capability elements.”

He notes that the industry efforts have already led to the creation of some 1,800 jobs even before the program has entered its next phase, with more to follow as the program advances.

“If we are coming out of Brexit and COVID-19 and want to stand on a world stage, defense has to matter, and air power has to matter,” says Chris Boardman, managing director for BAE Systems’ Air business.

“I am not complacent,” he says. “I do recognize that the coronavirus pandemic has brought big social and economic problems, but I am confident that the requirement is not going to go away.”
future factoryBAE Systems is investing in its vision of a factory of the future that will make extensive use of additive manufacturing and cobotics for cheaper production and assembly. Credit: BAE Systems

For the last five years, the UK has been reskilling capabilities and developing technologies through its FCAS TI program that could be fed into a future combat aircraft. These efforts were finally made public with the unveiling of the Combat Air Strategy and Team Tempest at the 2018 Farnborough Airshow. Since then, the British government has signed a 10-year memorandum of understanding with Sweden and agreed on a statement of intent with Italy, last July and September, respectively.

Studies currently underway with both nations will help identify the requirements of each nation and ensure that the needs of Italy and Sweden are understood as the Tempest program proceeds to the next step.

In late July, the Swedish defense ministry will submit budgetary documentation to allow it to begin development work on next-generation combat aircraft between 2021 and 2025, including studies, technology development and demonstrator activities with international partners.

“Discussions are more at the government, air force and [defense ministry] level at the moment,” explains Norman Bone, chairman and managing director of Leonardo UK and the head of Leonardo’s defense electronics business. “Industry [from all three countries] have been talking, but we have not all been in the room with the three parties . . . though we are not far away from that,” he says.

“In Italy and Sweden, we feel we have got something in common . . . an aligned view of what is required, and we think our industrial bases are complimentary,” Berthon says.

How the nations and industry will work together is still to be formalized, but Berthon is looking for an “agile and organic” approach that is “fast enough to keep pace with the program.”

“What we shouldn’t do is replicate the way we set up [Eurofighter] Typhoon,” Bone explains, noting that the Eurofighter program’s workshare approach—with each partner-nation building elements of every aircraft and assembling them in four different countries—does not lend itself to the low-cost, export ambitions of Tempest.

“Having an export-centric platform that can be spiraled to national requirement is going to be at the core of what we are trying to do here,” Bone adds. “That is the reason we are designing this from the inside out.”

The model will need to be able to adapt to new partners. UK is eying additional nations to join the program, in particular Japan, which is looking for a collaborative partner for a fighter that will replace the Mitsubishi F-2.

“You need to have partners who are willing to go on the same journey with you in a pretty comprehensive sense,” Berthon explains. “There is also an opportunity for others to partner in a way that suits them.”

Tempest partners will need to believe in doing things in a “different and more efficient way,” suggests Boardman, with “less guaranteed workshare, independent of capability, more best athletes, more new capability and more proven TRL [Technology Readiness Level] to be able to do that activity.”

Technology is one of the key enablers that will allow the Tempest to keep the “door open to new partners for longer,” Berthon suggests.

Although the milestone business case will likely narrow down the architecture of the aircraft, digital technologies mean that some key decisions can be held off until technologies can be matured.

“We can retain more choice for longer, and that’s really helpful,” Berthon explains. “The people working on Eurofighter had to set a concept decades before the capability would enter into service.”

One of those systems will be the Tempest’s open mission system, the BAE Systems-led Pyramid, which, according to Berthon, will allow for different configurations within the combat air system. “I think that creates the opportunity for a lot more agile partnering,” he says.

Baseline architecture for Pyramid was recently completed and shared with the Tempest partners, officials tell Aviation Week. And even though its development sits outside the Tempest development, “it is a fundamental building block,” Boardman says, noting that BAE has been working on the building blocks for the Tempest for the past 15-20 years, mainly through its unmanned programs such as the Mantis, Taranis and Magma.

Today, the company is further maturing technologies around next-generation cockpits and payload bays, but a key focus is how the Tempest could be produced.

“The factory of the future is about low volume and low cost . . . how you break the norm of the past, which says you have to have high volume to get low cost,” Boardman explains.

An area of interest for BAE is a process called cobotics whereby workers cooperate with robotics to complete certain tasks. Specially developed workbenches can be adapted for tasks and assist the workers through a particular process using technologies such as augmented reality.

Boardman says BAE is already trying out new manufacturing techniques for wiring and looming on the Typhoon and testing the cobotic benches at several manufacturing and assembly points.

At Leonardo, the company’s efforts are focused on a future multifunction array radar, defensive aids and sensor fusion. Late last year, the company revealed it had developed radar-warning receiver technologies that are four times more accurate than existing sensors, are 1/10th the size, and have considerably reduced power requirements. While the company’s work on the Captor-E active, electronically scanned array radar for the Eurofighter uses the gallium arsenide semiconductor, the company is experimenting with other materials, including gallium nitride and silicon germanium for future sensors on the Tempest.

Bone says developing the sensors will be a close collaborative effort with Saab and Leonardo teams in both the UK and Italy.

“One will probably take the lead, but the other two will be very important in the design of it, and that will be the same for most of the key sensor activity,” he says.

The next step for the Tempest is an assessment phase in which the technology developed by the FCAS TI will be matured and tested. Then it will be demonstrated that it can function as part of a system, potentially in flight on Team Tempest’s planned Boeing 757 testbed announced last July. That aircraft, to be supplied through a contract with Leonardo by 2Excel Aviation has already been sourced and is currently in storage, ready for conversion work and flight tests during the early 2020s.

UK officials dismiss the need to merge the Tempest initiative with those of France, Germany and Spain’s own FCAS. In June, Airbus Defense and Space CEO Dirk Hoke told the London-based Royal Aeronautical Society that maintaining two programs in Europe could be a “bad solution” for both the UK and the European Union, repeating the 1990s error of Europe having three combat aircraft developments in parallel: Eurofighter, Gripen and Rafale.

“I don’t see this sort of inherent logic that everything must merge together,” Berthon said. “There are many factors around the industrial and technology base and the partnering histories that each of us has globally. . . . The UK has a different military strategy from anywhere else, as does France, as does Germany, and that has driven us to where we want to be.”

He notes the requirements of the FCAS are radically different from that of the Tempest. Derivatives of the French, German and Spanish aircraft will need to operate from an aircraft carrier and perform the nuclear deterrence mission, both of which could bring additional complexity and cost to the program.

Having two programs in Europe maintains “a degree of competitive pressure on our industries,” Berthon suggests. Such competition, he says, has been helpful by not leading Europe into a monopoly on supply.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by bobp »

Money to build a prototype, as well as the test airframes hopefully will come when its needed.

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shark bait
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Ron5 wrote:The aim is to develop a next-generation, low-cost combat aircraft ... and to do it in at least half the time it took to bring the Eurofighter to front-line service.
Very glad to see this front and centre. They must prioritise practicality and affordability over absolute performance otherwise there will be nothing left by the end of the decade.
Ron5 wrote:“What we shouldn’t do is replicate the way we set up Typhoon,” .... assembling them in four different countries—does not lend itself to the low-cost, export ambitions of Tempest.
Again, very glad to see this mentioned. The work share agreement on Typhoon is horrible, and there's no way each country can have an assembly line for the lower volume Tempest. If Italy, Sweden and the UK can't agree on this they're all idiots!
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Meriv9 »

Dont know if I'm writing something stupid but what about one assembly line with workers rotation, from the different companies/countries such that assembly know how won't get monopolized by one country.

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shark bait
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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I don't think there is a problem with a single country having a monopoly of final assembly. For example if Italy had final assembly of Tempest there would still be loads of high tech manufacturing done in the UK and Sweden who could be supplying fully fitted out modules to the assembly line.

This is pretty much how Airbus do it, lots of factories around Europe produce fully assembled components to be bolted together in France. The French get the flashy final assembly line, but there is more high value manufacturing spread across many sites.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Airbus have final assembly lines in Toulouse, Hamburg, mobile Alabama, Mirabel and Tianjin. They’ll also tell you it adds little to the overall cost to do it that way and they make it commercially viable with relatively small rates in some locations because customers want it local. It very much depends what rate your talking about.

There are two things around “work Share”. First one is that work is outsourced to competent supplier who generally have certain specialties regardless of which country there in and regardless of arbitrary “workshare” percentages, this can be politically difficult in defence contracts. And second you can’t wait for multiple governments to put in cash for every upgrade if someone wants something, that someone else doesn’t again politically difficult, so it maybe has to be company funded upgrades bought by countries (I know this sounds like the same thing but it’s different)

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shark bait
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Different. Each of those European lines is producing different products.

It's real difficult to justify duplicating production lines for the low volumes we're expecting with Tempest. There's no technical reason to do it, only political.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Having been to couple of them Hamburg, Toulouse, Tianjin and Mobile are all making a320s series. Mirabel and mobile are making a220s.

Airbus factories around Europe and elsewhere specialising in making specific parts to feed into those lines but they’re happy for it to be done that way, if you keep traveled work and final assembly activity to a minimum.

I don’t know what the volume for tempest would be at this stage.

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shark bait
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Yeah the others have been recently set up to manage the huge A320 demand, now building nearly two per day! Tempest production shared between Italy, Sweden and UK will total a couple of hundred units, and is more likely to be two a month, no where near enough to make a second line practical.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by seaspear »

The comments above lead to the question would the f35 have been cheaper if produced in the same country but then how much of its success has been due to countries having the ability to incorporate their own industries into hi tech job production

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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seaspear wrote:The comments above lead to the question would the f35 have been cheaper if produced in the same country but then how much of its success has been due to countries having the ability to incorporate their own industries into hi tech job production
That’s not were the cost in f35 is. F35 built cost into the major sub component assembly for a variety of reasons. But we’re it really went wrong was they really built 3 different aircraft but took the long way to get there. I suspect had Boeing won the contract for the airforce and navy aircraft and Lockheed the marine corp aircraft. Using common power plant, radar, and other systems it would be in a much better place cost wise.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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SW1 wrote:
seaspear wrote:The comments above lead to the question would the f35 have been cheaper if produced in the same country but then how much of its success has been due to countries having the ability to incorporate their own industries into hi tech job production
That’s not were the cost in f35 is. F35 built cost into the major sub component assembly for a variety of reasons. But we’re it really went wrong was they really built 3 different aircraft but took the long way to get there. I suspect had Boeing won the contract for the airforce and navy aircraft and Lockheed the marine corp aircraft. Using common power plant, radar, and other systems it would be in a much better place cost wise.
I think that there were fairly substantial costs incurred by the concurrency method of development.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Pseudo wrote:
SW1 wrote:
seaspear wrote:The comments above lead to the question would the f35 have been cheaper if produced in the same country but then how much of its success has been due to countries having the ability to incorporate their own industries into hi tech job production
That’s not were the cost in f35 is. F35 built cost into the major sub component assembly for a variety of reasons. But we’re it really went wrong was they really built 3 different aircraft but took the long way to get there. I suspect had Boeing won the contract for the airforce and navy aircraft and Lockheed the marine corp aircraft. Using common power plant, radar, and other systems it would be in a much better place cost wise.
I think that there were fairly substantial costs incurred by the concurrency method of development.
Yes the long way to design an aircraft. It takes a lot of resources to design an aircraft, no one has the ability to design more than one at the same time and what happens if you attempt to is things get missed, focus on areas is lost and things get way out of control as there simply isn’t enough of the right people around time and cost mount rapidly. There is always an element on concurrency in any design process but it is also the case that sometimes things are claimed as concurrency issues when they should never have been there in the first place had the design process been followed properly.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegr ... y-jet/amp/

Williams motorsport joining team Tempest...

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shark bait
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by shark bait »

Britain’s Next Fighter Jet Could Be Propelled by Batteries
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/britain-s-n ... -1.1465687

Probably where they got this trash story from! Range of 1 mile I bet!
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by SKB »

Hmm. BAE Systems has a partnership with Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), it specialises in batteries for Formula E cars.
https://www.wae.com/news/2020/07/motors ... evelopment
https://www.wae.com/what-we-do/case-studies/bae-systems

A controlling majority share of WAE was sold by Williams Grand Prix Holdings plc in December 2019 to a private equity firm. It continues to use the "Williams" name under licence.
https://www.businessinnovationmag.co.uk ... -business/

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by bobp »

Perhaps its more to do with providing large amounts of electrical power for lasers etc.

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