Brewing up a storm: Tempest ushers in new era for UK combat aviation
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When the UK revealed its Combat Air Strategy (CAS) at the Farnborough International Air Show in 2018, a main pillar of this strategy was ‘Team Tempest’. This team, comprising the Royal Air Force (RAF) Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), BAE Systems, Leonardo UK, MBDA UK, and Rolls-Royce was tasked with developing the technologies, knowledge, skills, and expertise to build a Future Combat Air System (FCAS) capable of operating in the 2030s and beyond.
(This article first appeared in 2018.)
The Tempest was unveiled alongside a new “Combat Air Strategy” document marking the UK’s reorientation to preparing for high-intensity conflicts and the danger posed by modern anti-aircraft weapons. However, the document largely focuses on industrial and financial matters, particularly on keeping British military aerospace sector sustainable despite constrained defense budgets and the steadily increasing cost of high-performance platforms like the Type 26 frigate.
With a flourish of a silk curtain at the Farnborough Air Show on July 16, British defense secretary Gavin Williamson unveiled a full-scale model of the Tempest, the UK’s concept for a domestically built twin-engine stealth fighter to enter service in the 2030s. The Tempest will supposedly boast a laundry list of sixth-generation technologies such as being optionally-manned, mounting hypersonic or directed energy weapons, and capability to deploy and control drone swarms. How
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Credit: Cpl. Tim Laurence/Royal Air Force
All across Europe, NATO members are spending more on defense nearly 4% more in real terms from 2019 to 2020, according to the alliance’s latest report. So it perhaps seems counterintuitive that the UK, one of its most stalwart members, is cutting back on capabilities in spite of a planned £24 billion ($33 billion) uptick in defense spending over the next four years. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy has called for a pivot to the Far East and spending on new technologies, cyber, uncrewed systems, hypersonic missiles and directed-energy weapons. But the review took a grim reaper’s scythe to some of the UK’s most vaunted capabilities combat air, air mobility and, most crucially, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) fleets to pay for the pivot.