Tony Osborne Tempest is advancing toward a delivery plan and adding industrial partners as funding flows from the UK and Italy.
Tony Osborne
The international partners in the UK-led Tempest Future Combat Air System initiative are moving toward formation of a joint venture that will go on to develop the platform.
It is unclear how the joint venture will be structured. But unlike entities such as the Panavia consortium that developed the trinational Tornado, or Eurofighter GmbH that led the work on the four-nation Eurofighter aircraft, the Tempest joint venture will act as the design authority for the platform. That role was left to a manufacturer—such as BAE Systems, Airbus, Leonardo and their predecessors—in previous consortia.
“We’re not going to carve up the program and do this the way we did in previous programs,” Michael Christie, BAE Systems’ director of Future Combat Air Systems, told a Tempest industry panel at the Defense Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition in London on Sept. 16. “We are going to behave as a single program, a single enterprise, and as if we’ve got completely joint motivations,” Christie said.
“All the partners will feel as though it is ‘our program.’ That is very difficult to achieve if you stand off or behave like a shareholder,” he said.
Although a single organization will run the program, there will still be a need for multiple sites for assembly, as with previous programs.
The aim of the approach is to avoid potential disagreements over intellectual property and workshare that recently dogged negotiations on the French-German-Spanish Future Combat Air System and at one point threatened to fracture the partnership (AW&ST July 26-Aug. 8, p. 53).
“This goal of international value is really what we are trying to achieve here,” Christie said. “We’re not going to achieve this if we all behave like three organizations looking after our own value and our own agenda.”
Until now, the Tempest has essentially been an assortment of research and development projects to test and mature technologies that could become part of the air system. This work has been carried out by the Team Tempest industrial consortium working with the UK Defense Ministry through its Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative (FCAS TI).
Christie cited the success of the Saab-Boeing partnership on development of the T-7 Red Hawk jet trainer, which was built in three years across two sites through a single program established by the two companies.
The move toward formation of a joint venture comes after the UK government greenlighted establishment of an acquisition program to enable the FCAS program to move into the concept and assessment phase. In that phase, technologies including the digital approach to platform development will be matured and core system elements will be firmed up, including the crewed core fighter and what UK Royal Air Force officials call the uncrewed adjuncts that will support it (AW&ST April 5-18, p. 48).
Officials say development of the Tempest requires a cultural change to deliver the rapid developments needed for the platform to enter service in the 2030s. Credit: BAE Systems Concept
Italy has begun allocating funds to support Tempest development, with €2 billion ($2.3 billion) slated to be provided by the Italian defense ministry over the next 15 years. This will likely be supplemented by additional funding from other government departments in Rome, including the economic and finance ministry and the economic development ministry.
Sweden, meanwhile, is mulling how it will replace its Saab Gripen C/Ds in the 2030s and how it will roll technologies into future fleets.
One key challenge for the joint venture will be to ensure that the structure can accommodate future partnerships. Christie noted that it will need to adapt to ensure countries that join later “don’t feel like a second-class citizen.”
Japan could be one of those future nations. The country’s flag flew alongside those of Italy and Sweden over a mockup of the Tempest cockpit at the DSEI event. The country is looking to use or adapt some Tempest technologies for its F-X platform, which is envisaged to replace Japan’s F-16-derived F-2 fleet starting in 2035, similar to the Tempest’s introduction.
The UK and Japan are conducting a joint engine viability study, Air Cdre. Jonny Moreton, program director for the UK Future Combat Air Program at the UK Defense Ministry, told the panel, adding that this could further broaden into electronic warfare and radar. It is unclear whether the engine work with Japan will lead to the Tempest and the Japanese F-X platform sharing the same engine or if the engines will share a similar set of technologies, but Moreton said the ability to work with different nations on even select components of the wider Tempest program offers partner nations greater freedom of action and modification.
“We want to be able to upgrade, advance, spiral-develop our capabilities ourselves. And as sovereign countries inside [the] partnership, each partner has that role,” Moreton said.
The UK is continuing to work on its Mosquito Lightweight Affordable Novel Combat Aircraft manufacturing demonstrator being developed by Spirit AeroSystems, Northrop Grumman and research, development and consultancy firm Intrepid Minds. Spirit is using resin infusion technologies to produce the lightweight airframe.
The jet-trainer-size demonstrator is being developed to prove that such platforms can be rapidly developed and produced at a low cost to provide what Royal Air Force officials describe as an attritable adjunct for the manned fighter. Plans to get the demonstrator flying in 2023 are on track, Air Chief Marshal Michael Wigston, chief of staff for the Royal Air Force, said in a speech at DSEI. Flight testing is planned to be conducted in UK airspace.
BAE Systems has also added Marshall as a partner on Team Tempest as part of a strategic collaboration framework. The Cambridge, England-based company would be the first supplier to have a delegated design authority on the program. BAE and Marshall will partner on design, manufacturing and testing work in the technology demonstration program. The manufacturing work will focus primarily on Marshall’s composites work.
Marshall has traditionally participated on large aircraft programs, so the work for Team Tempest represents a step into the combat air domain for the company.
Full development of the Tempest is expected to get underway in 2025, and the initial operational capability is planned for 2035.
Although the Tempest’s first flight is some years off, its mission systems and sensors are set to take to the air on a flying testbed being jointly developed by Leonardo and 2Excel Aviation.
The ex-TUI Airways Boeing 757 will be converted into a flying laboratory called Excalibur, which will be operated by 2Excel under contract from Leonardo.
The airliner’s interior will be stripped out and equipped with workstations for up to 12 observers. Engineers will also install a Tempest-representative cockpit so sensors and systems can be tested in flight. Externally, the aircraft will feature a modified nose to enable installation of experimental versions of the proposed Multifunction Radio Frequency System radar array, while a series of bulges on the forward fuselage window line will enable the testing of other sensors, to give them a wide field of regard. The configuration has yet to be finalized, in part because the Tempest suite of systems and sensors has not yet been formally defined.
Chris Walton, project director for Excalibur at 2Excel Aviation, said the 757 was chosen because of its size, weight and electrical power capabilities. “We know that the technologies of the future are going to be really power-hungry . . . and that’s going to be critical when providing power to nonproductionized units that are technology demonstrators and not finished products,” Walton said.
Martin Downes, capability manager for major air programs at Leonardo, says a Tempest flying testbed is essential to ensure the numerous systems work together as advertised. “A big challenge for a lot of people is, ‘why do we need to do this in the real world? Isn’t simulation good enough these days?’ Well, the answer is probably ‘no,’” Downes said. “It’s going to be really expensive to find out right at the end if [the simulation technologies do] not [work together].”
As well as acting as a Tempest testbed, Excalibur will be offered for other systems’ tests and research flights, Leonardo and 2Excel hope. Credit: Leonardo and 2Excel Aviation
In addition to trials for the Tempest, 2Excel and Leonardo are exploring whether other UK companies would like to use the platform for testing systems.
2Excel is working on a second Leonardo contract that covers preparatory work on the aircraft, which is in storage at Lasham, England, where 2Excel has a maintenance, repair and overhaul facility.
The two companies say more detailed design activities will get underway over the next 12 months, along with laying out the flight schedule.
Work to begin modifying the aircraft for its research and development role is still at least two years away and will be preceded by an initial campaign to understand the flight characteristics of the standard aircraft. Flight-test instrumentation will be fitted in advance of baseline flight tests required for future certification of the modified aircraft. The modification process to flight-testbed configuration is expected to take around three years.
Excalibur will be the third Boeing 757 modified for aerospace research use. Boeing operates the prototype 757 as an avionics testbed for the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, while Honeywell flies a 757 as a trial aircraft for new engines, avionics and communications systems.
