TO absolutely no-one’s surprise, the Sunday Telegraph is reporting that the ‘Typhoon fighter replacement faces years of delay’, telling us that the ‘RAF could be waiting until 2040s for £12billion fleet of “next-generation” Tempest jets’.
In terms of the Tempest project, my only surprise is that it got off the ground in the first place.
It is among the fruits of the Cameron administration’s National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review, published in November 2015. Although this review was short on detail, it did commit to investing in the ‘next generation of combat aircraft technology’, which would be ‘in partnership with our defence aerospace industry and our closest allies’. The only thing specifically mentioned, though, in terms of development, was a promise to ‘work with France to develop our Unmanned Combat Air System programme and collaborate on complex weapons’.
The French collaboration lasted until 2019, when it was officially abandoned but, the year earlier, under the May government, we had seen the publication of the Combat Air Strategy, setting out ‘an ambitious vision for the future’.
Noting that the 2015 review had committed to ‘an extensive programme of upgrades to ensure Typhoon’s operational effectiveness and to enable the aircraft to operate with the Royal Air Force until at least 2040’, this rather cooks the Telegraph’s goose as the plan even then was to have the Eurofighter (aka Typhoon) operating well into the 2040s.
Then, as a replacement, the strategy outlined its requirements for ‘Combat Air’, stating that we would need ‘an aircraft, manned or unmanned, whose prime function is to conduct air-to-air and/or air-to-surface combat operations in a hostile and/or contested environment, whilst having the ability to concurrently conduct surveillance, reconnaissance, electronic warfare and command and control tasks’.
The same day that the review was published — July 16, 2018 — the Tempest programme was introduced at the Farnborough Airshow, with a maiden flight planned for 2025 and entry into service at an unrealistically early date of 2035.
With the programme soon morphing into a multinational project, involving Sweden (which later dropped out), Italy and then Japan, the Tempest was never going to enjoy an easy gestation, given the dire performance of such projects – adequately described by Lewis Page in the Telegraph a week ago, when he predicted that Britain’s next-generation fighter jet was ‘a disaster in the making’.
As it stands, the Sunday Telegraph tells us, a £686million interim development contract for the new fighters was signed in April 2026 between the UK, Italy and Japan. The contract expires in June, however. A longer-term plan has been postponed because of a lack of clarity over the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) which is also long-delayed, with no date set for publication.
The essential problem to which the Sunday Telegraph draws attention is that, when the DIP is finally published, it is expected to confirm that the funding for its project will be released only towards the mid-2030s, pushing back the Tempest’s in-service date well into the 2040s.
What may also explain the glacial progress – but not explored by the Telegraph – is that the Tempest is a project that was initiated by the Conservatives, first by the Cameron.
Those with longer memories will remember Labour’s Defence Industrial Strategy published in December 2005 in the dying days of the Blair years.
In this lengthy document, the MoD noted that the Typhoon and the Joint Combat Aircraft (F-35) were intended to last for more than 30 years and that ‘current plans do not envisage the UK needing to design and build a future generation of manned fast jet aircraft beyond these types’.
The ministry was, it said, ‘examining the balance between manned and uninhabited aerial vehicles’. Therefore, it added, ‘whilst there is no current requirement for a new design manned aircraft beyond our extant plans, future procurements of uninhabited and/or manned platforms are envisaged’.
However, it was very clear from the emphasis of the strategy that the future belonged to UAVs, a point emphasised by defence secretary John Reid, when he introduced the Strategy to the Commons.
In the air sector, he told MPs, the RAF is in the middle of a substantial re-equipment programme, introducing into service the Eurofighter Typhoon and looking forward to the arrival in the next decade of the joint strike fighter.
Repeating the points from the strategy, he stated that both those aircraft would last for at least 30 years. Thus, he declared: ‘Our current plans do not, therefore, envisage the UK needing to design and build a future generation of manned fast jet aircraft beyond the current projects – that is some 30 years away.’
On the other hand, he went on to say: ‘I am delighted to announce that we will invest in a significant technology demonstration programme for uninhabited combat aerial vehicles’.
That, he stated, ‘will help us to better understand the potential military benefits of uninhabited aerial vehicles – sometimes referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles, I have been instructed to say – including combat versions’.
That, Reid said, ‘is a serious investment in unmanned aerial vehicles, which is vital for the future, and it is also essential in assisting the sustainability of the required capabilities to support our new manned aircraft’.
That, he stated, ‘involves a period of fairly dramatic transformation, and clarity and forward ability to manage that transition will maximise benefits to industry, the armed forces and, I hope, the taxpayer’.
The message was clear enough then for me to write a piece in EU Referendum headed ‘The end of the line’ (for manned combat aircraft), a point also picked up by the periodical DefenceNews which wrote: ‘The MoD appears to have formally brought down the curtain on the design and development of fast jet aircraft in the UK.’
Fast forward to today’s Telegraph article and we see it saying that ‘drones and autonomous systems are to be prioritised in the DIP, it is understood, following the emergence of the technologies as a key battle arena in both the Iran and Ukraine wars’.
But, in what turns out to be a remarkably prescient strategy, the writing was already on the wall in 2005. By holding back on the development of a new manned combat aircraft, Labour is simply reverting to its original ideas, after they had been side-tracked by the Conservatives.
Although I didn’t think so then, my view is that the 2005 strategy was right to transition from manned aircraft and turn to UAVs. The vastly more capable anti-aircraft missiles (surface-to-air and air-to-air) have effectively excluded manned aircraft from the battle area – as we have seen in Ukraine.
In terms of ground support, stand-off weapons such as cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, long-range guided artillery, loitering munitions, glide bombs and the ubiquitous kamikaze drones, have largely replaced the roles of manned aircraft. Rather than fast jets, the pressing need is for slow, gun-equipped combat aircraft to shoot down attack drones such as the Iranian-designed Shaheed drones.
Behind the push to develop a manned, sixth generation combat aircraft, though, is the strategic need to retain a sovereign military aviation capability, which as an objective makes some sense. However, procurement of weapons should be dictated by military need – not as a way of generating new jobs.
And it remains to be seen whether the dwindling UK armed forces really do need a sixth-generation combat aircraft, or whether the estimated £12billion for the project (plus over-runs) might be better spent elsewhere.
This article appeared in Turbulent Times on May 31, 2026, and is republished by kind permission.
