Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Contains threads on Royal Air Force equipment of the past, present and future.
Jake1992
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Jake1992 »

RetroSicotte wrote:
Lord Jim wrote:We could also try to get Finns and Swedes on board and anyone else who haven't bought into the F-35, maybe even Canada if they decide to make do with the F-18 in some form or other.
Sweden, yes.

Finland and Canada's requirements come long before Tempest is likely to be due though.
Tempest414 wrote:I for one would like to see SAAB and the Saudi's come on board
Saab of course, Saudis though, hell no.

Sales to them? Maybe.

Actually involved in production? HELL no. Too much opportunity to screw it all up via politics.
Jake1992 wrote:For me best set up would be the UK, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Canada
As above, Canada's time to require is off schedule.

The rest though? Thats defo the "main four". All good respectable supporters in aviation too.
If they get the third hand F-18s like they’re on about then that gap could be Bridged, it all depends on that for Canada

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Tempest414
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Tempest414 »

RetroSicotte wrote:Saab of course, Saudis though, hell no.

Sales to them? Maybe.

Actually involved in production? HELL no. Too much opportunity to screw it all up via politics.
I was thinking more there money than them making anything i.e an order for a 100 jets or so

Ares
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Ares »

Have you guys ever seen the similar scene in this video start in about 1:50 before? Some documentary clip broadcasted by All-Nippon News Network. :p


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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by SW1 »

Ares wrote:Have you guys ever seen the similar scene in this video start in about 1:50 before? Some documentary clip broadcasted by All-Nippon News Network. :p

It’s a demonstration of the BAE wearable cockpit concept

https://www.aerosociety.com/news/wearab ... interface/

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Ares »

SW1 wrote:It’s a demonstration of the BAE wearable cockpit concept
I've never seen this technology action in such detail. You don't need any display, button whatsoever, just helmet and palm make the entire fighter jet to work! Amazing.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by RetroSicotte »

I would be enormously surprised if a jet even with this lacks physical controls. I figure this will be an enhancement, not a replacement.

The truly exciting thing isn't the "can control in VR" to me, it's how much easier it would be to change and adapt the layout. Current plane needs to add a new capability? Gotta adjust the whole cockpit to fit new switches and wiring. With a virtual system? Just change the UI.

Old cockpit has a design flaw? Gotta rebuild or just live with it. VR system? Just fix it.

That's the truly revolutionary part of it. The power of customisation it gives.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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An different view into the insight of new fighter program selection from the US side

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/2 ... yf-23-lost

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

RetroSicotte wrote:I would be enormously surprised if a jet even with this lacks physical controls. I figure this will be an enhancement, not a replacement.
Agreed on the physical controls. It will be very difficult to work the VR like in the video under high G loads. The cockpit of the future could just have some classic 'steam' gauge's, enough to get you home in the event of a VR failure, with all of the main displays contained within the VR system.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Meriv9 »

For the VR under Higher G a solution would have been the internal cockpit of the concept P 125 with the pilot laying.
Image

Image

So the pilot can withstand higher G, that IMHO in the future will be important if fighter drones becomes a thing.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Ron5 »

Meriv9 wrote:pilot laying
Sounds like a flyboy :-)

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

Meriv9 wrote:So the pilot can withstand higher G, that IMHO in the future will be important if fighter drones becomes a thing.
Already done with the F-16. The P.125 was as much to do with directed energy weapons and the potential for pilots being blinded. Laying down, rather than sitting up, may increase your ability to withstand the G forces, but you're still going to have to lift your arms and hands to control the VR, which won't be easy when they weight 8-9 times as much....hence the move to HOTAS controls in the late 70's when high G loads became increasingly common and HUD technology increased.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

If you are going for advanced VR then why have the Pilot in the plane at all. Having him or her on the ground where G-force doesn't matter and the platform can maximise its performance.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by SKB »

Meriv9 wrote:Image
^ Deja vu moment....
Image

Jake1992
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Jake1992 »

Iv just been watching some YouTube videos on tempest out of boredom and when reading through the comments I found one that really stuck out to me. It stated that the UK has made a deal with the USA in regards to tempest partnership similar to the F35 but this time with the USA taking a 60% lead in the project and the UK increase to 40% with BEA supplying much more of the avionics.

Has anyone here heard anything of this or is it all just bullshit ?

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SKB
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by SKB »

Jake1992 wrote:BEA
Its bullshit.
BEA merged with BOAC in 1971 to form British Airways.
But British Airways has no current plans to operate the Tempest due to its low passenger capacity, poor legroom and lack of toilets.
However, Ryanair and Easyjet are allegedly showing some interest.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

Jake1992 wrote:Has anyone here heard anything of this or is it all just bullshit ?
Weapons grade bullshit. BAE want to be the lead on this. It has little to offer the US at present as they're balls deep on F-35, B-21 with the US aviation industry looking towards F/A-XX and PCA. One of the key requirements for it as well is being ITAR free. The political use by the US of ITAR to try and snuff out any export opportunities by foreign competitors (which it was not intended for) has backfired spectacularly. The last people you want in a partnership that is to some degree dependent on export sales is any US or German involvement at present.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Jake1992 »

Timmymagic wrote:
Jake1992 wrote:Has anyone here heard anything of this or is it all just bullshit ?
Weapons grade bullshit. BAE want to be the lead on this. It has little to offer the US at present as they're balls deep on F-35, B-21 with the US aviation industry looking towards F/A-XX and PCA. One of the key requirements for it as well is being ITAR free. The political use by the US of ITAR to try and snuff out any export opportunities by foreign competitors (which it was not intended for) has backfired spectacularly. The last people you want in a partnership that is to some degree dependent on export sales is any US or German involvement at present.
Good to know, it had me a bit worried that once again we’d supply so much tech expertise and be relegated to a joiner partner.

I also saw talk of the tempest program merging with the Franco German project which sent shiver down my spine.
As Iv said before on here for me it should be a UK led partnership of us the Swedish, the Italians, the Japanese and perhaps the Canadians.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

The French don't play nice in joint programmes unless they have the lead and the most work. They are rightly obsessed, justifiably so some might say, in retaining their nations aerospace industries outside any US influence. They have too much national pride invested and when they do have to go to the devil to purchase platforms they do anything to keep it quiet or find a way to spin it into something that support the national interest.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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UK Tempest Next-Gen Fighter Program Draws Notice Of Potential Partners
Apr 10, 2019 Tony Osborne | Aviation Week & Space Technology

As potential foreign partners take a serious interest in British proposals to develop a new-generation combat aircraft, the UK government and industry are quietly working on the technologies that will pave the way for it.

Few details of the Tempest’s progress have emerged in the nine months since British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson unveiled the UK vision for a new combat aircraft to be ready in the late 2030s.

To get there, the UK is taking a multipronged approach. While the Combat Air Strategy outlined that Britain would stay in the combat aircraft development game, the Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative (FCAS TI), an eight-year, £2 billion ($2.6 billion) program of research jointly funded by government and industry, is examining the technologies that could be needed not only for the future combat aircraft but also to support future upgrades for the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).

UK efforts to develop UCAV technologies will be flowed into the Tempest and associated systems

Trials of hardware to support the development of an open-systems architecture will be underway shortly

The public face of FCAS TI is Team Tempest, the joint government and industry consortium made up of the Royal Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, BAE Systems, Leonardo, MBDA and Rolls-Royce.

All these elements feed into an acquisition program within the Defense Ministry that will ultimately lead to a platform to replace the Typhoon. An initial business case for that platform will be delivered in December 2020, a full business case in 2025 and initial operational capability in 2035.

“Everything we do is focused on ensuring the UK is ready as a globally competitive combat air enterprise,” Group Capt. Jez Holmes, the Team Tempest program director, tells Aviation Week.

What results from the UK’s FCAS TI and Tempest work may look very different from the concepts shown so far, but it will make extensive use of locally developed technologies for future unmanned systems. Credit: BAE Systems Concept

“What we’re trying to do is produce something that delivers credibility in capability terms and also delivers prosperity for the nation by bringing in partnerships,” he says.

Team Tempest’s sphere, in addition to conceiving and developing technologies for the future aircraft, encompasses the educational needs of the program so that skills can be maintained throughout the program’s life.

“Part of the FCAS TI initiative and the industry contribution is about sustaining and building those teams that perhaps have not had a huge amount of demand over the past 10-15 years,” says Clive Marrison, industry requirements director at Team Tempest.

Britain’s last Defense Industrial Strategy, published in 2005, stated that the introduction of the Eurofighter and the JSF meant the UK did not need to envisage building a new fighter for more than 30 years because they were both likely to have long operational lives. Upgrade programs for the Typhoon and development of the Taranis unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) demonstrator have helped maintain those skills, but the Combat Air Strategy said that without a “clear indication of future requirements,” key engineering skills were placed at “greater risk.”

“Would we have lost those skills?” asks Marrison. “It is difficult to say, but without the investment both from industry and government in research and development over the last 10 years and now into FCAS TI and Tempest, we would not have been in such a good position to sustain and grow them again.”

In March, Team Tempest held an industry day for potential suppliers to understand the Combat Air Strategy and how they can feed into the program through government and the Team Tempest consortium. It attracted some 300 delegates from industry and government.

“It is not just about supporting the big four [BAE, Leonardo, MBDA and Rolls-Royce]; it is about supporting as much of the UK industrial and supply base as possible and bringing together as many of the clever minds, clever ideas and clever technologies as we can,” says Marrison.

The team is hoping that the work on the Tempest can ignite interest in aerospace technology in the same way the Concorde did during the 1960s. “Some of the people who will be involved on Tempest, potentially in service until 2080, have not been born yet,” says Holmes.

“Part of our intent here is to engage on a STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] basis across the nation and bring something that gives them an iconic focus,” he adds.

There is no shortage of international interest as well. In late 2018, Sweden’s Saab confirmed it was in a “deepening dialog” with the UK over joining the Tempest program. At the end of last year, the company carried out a 6 billion krona ($650 million) rights issue that CEO Hakan Buskhe said could provide funding for future work, including with the UK. The Italian element of Leonardo said it was actively urging the Italian government to join the British FCAS work. Several influential think tanks in Rome have also pressed Italy’s government to join one of the two European projects, primarily urging it to side with the UK option, arguing that Italy would be sidelined if it joined the Franco-German efforts.

Beyond Europe, the Tempest is one of several options being studied for Japan’s F-3 future fighter requirement to replace the indigenous Mitsubishi F-2, and the British government reportedly has also made offers to India, with which it has previously partnered on the Hawk and Sepecat Jaguar.

FCAS TI is currently focused on 60-70 technology projects, some lasting 1-2 years, others planned to last the full length of the program.

Some of the initial work underway on concepts and requirements is feeding what Holmes calls an “initial gauge,” supporting the opening stages of the acquisition process.

“It will start to deliver them with credible evidence about not only what the need but [also] about what we think we are able to do in an affordable way, with a focus on future adaptability and growth potential, so that we ensure we set ourselves up on a path for success,” says Holmes.

Part of that work is on industry sustainability; others have a more international flavor, such as several projects with France looking at communications and interoperability enabling future platforms to work together in a coalition.

Progress also is being made on development of a comprehensive open mission-system architecture designed to embrace avionics, sensors, connectivity and command-and-control systems. Definition of the architecture and component specifications are close to completion, and components are being built for testing. The architecture will not only underpin the potential for spiral development but also will allow partners or export customers to integrate their own mission-system fits quickly, as it has systematic reuse of software at its core.

With data becoming the currency of the battlefield, and future combat aircraft gathering up information from the electromagnetic spectrum and sensors, any future architecture likely will have to cope with terabytes of information, Holmes suggests.

The challenge will be turning that data into “decision-quality information and presenting it in a useful way,” says Holmes. The ability to do this will depend on how quickly the aircraft’s systems can be upgraded. “What we’re focusing on in some of our work is how we make that much quicker, much easier and much more affordable,” he says. Such an approach could blur the lines between generations of fighters, Holmes says.

While the Typhoon is considered a fourth-generation combat aircraft and the F-35 as fifth-generation, the Tempest is widely considered to be sixth-generation. However, the aircraft might not be considered as such when it enters service in the late 2030s.

“We have architected our capabilities in the past in such a way that you have to talk in generational terms, because they have a long life, and step changes in capability are more challenging to deliver,” says Holmes.

Nevertheless, Holmes points to the Panavia Tornado, which when it left service at the end of March was an almost entirely different platform from when it entered service. The Typhoon will be the same, he notes.

“What is needed for a future combat aircraft is a regular, constant drumbeat of flexibility and upgradability, allowing that capability growth to happen much more quickly . . . almost breaking down the generation nomenclature to much smaller bite-size chunks,” says Holmes.

The UK’s heavy investments in unmanned combat aircraft technologies will also be applied.

The UK Defense Ministry and industry, led by BAE Systems, has poured hundreds of millions of pounds into a series of technology initiatives that ultimately led to development of the Taranis UCAV demonstrator and almost paved the way for a joint UCAV demonstrator with France, until the plans were shelved last year.

Many of these underlying technologies for the UAVs and UCAVs are “very transferable across to the systems-of-systems approach for FCAS TI,” Marrison says.

Those programs resulted in technologies for signature awareness and control, mission-system architectures, low-probability-of intercept communications and the ability to rapidly—potentially in real time—upgrade software and mission capabilities and orders.

“None of the areas of development and design and technology that we saw through those unmanned aerial systems—be they at the design, information, mission-system or architecture level—are going to go to waste,” says Marrison.

Like its Franco-German counterpart, the future British combat aircraft will likely end up working with unmanned platforms, perhaps as so-called loyal wingmen or as attritable systems designed to deceive air defenses, such as the swarming systems revealed by Williamson in February and expected to enter service in the early-to-mid 2020s.

In recent years, the UK has been experimenting with adaptable payload bays, advanced materials and new approaches to cockpit development, including the use of augmented reality. It has also invested in cyber-resilience, making software dynamically reconfigurable and more difficult to hack.

Some of the successful technologies that could emerge from the Tempest could also end up in the Typhoon. Rolls-Royce is testing some of the technologies it envisions for a future Tempest powerplant on a Eurojet EJ200, which could result in improvements for the Typhoon. “We are working closely with Typhoon, working closely with the F-35 team as well, so we can spot those opportunities as and when they arrive,” says Holmes.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

Interesting when he refers to the result of Tempest possibly not being a sixth generation platform. From that I get the feeling they are possibly looking beyond and really keeping all options open. This seems a very positive way to go rather than already having a set of customer requirements in place form the very beginning.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by RetroSicotte »

Lord Jim wrote:Interesting when he refers to the result of Tempest possibly not being a sixth generation platform. From that I get the feeling they are possibly looking beyond and really keeping all options open. This seems a very positive way to go rather than already having a set of customer requirements in place form the very beginning.
Always worthwhile to remember that "Xth Generation" is pretty much just Lockheed Martin marketing terminology that has somehow gotten picked up worldwide.

Every aircraft is the sum of its own parts. Whether it's classed as 4th, 5th, 6th has no bearing on its ability. Just an arbitrary number that has no bearing on its capability.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

RetroSicotte wrote:Always worthwhile to remember that "Xth Generation" is pretty much just Lockheed Martin marketing terminology that has somehow gotten picked up worldwide.
Yes. Some of the boundaries used between generations are fairly arbitrary....almost as if someone in marketing was coming up with it. All of the Gen 4.5 nonsense as well.

The scope as defined in the Combat Air Strategy and the above extract is very good, makes perfect sense, and is built to easily slot partner nations in.

The political angle is one of the most interesting. I think we can bank on Sweden and Italy's involvement. Quite simply they have to get involved. The Spanish FCAS presentation previously discussed did mention Dutch involvement in Tempest. Not entirely sure what they would actually bring to the table.

I'd be willing to have a small wager that FCAS in its present form is not going to see the light of day....there are problems ahead in the French/German/Spanish partnership.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by SW1 »

The Americans very keen to temp japan out of working with european partners there reportedly offering access to the code no one gets to see

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/2 ... sal-report

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

This part
"The notional F-3 could end up with a version of the still-in-development Block 4 software package for the F-35, which will offer even more capability, the ability to use the newest sensor configuration, and the integration of new weaponry, but has also proven to be particularly expensive. " is noteworthy, not only because of the need to spread the cost, but also for Block 4 LM is no longer the Prgrm Mngr (though undoubtedly will carry out the bulk of the work) so the new structure is open to having other folks do 'bits and bops' - even in ways that might be overlapping and redundant wrt. what USAF has 'ordered'
... the resemblance to Project PYRAMID that does not often get a mention in the Tempest context is remarkable. And indeed the Japanese could go down that route and only in a few years time choose which of the two bandwagons to jump onto.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by inch »

Isn't Japan's natural instinct to always go with the Americans , let's face it they have a lot more to offer in high tech technology or definitely a good run over the rest out there. the French/German group or uk/Sweden/ maybe Italian group , think the Americans can just put too good a sweetener the Japanese way tbh ,I just can't see the Japanese going to UK or French partnership for their next fighter

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