The United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan are working to create a groundbreaking new fighter plane. The three countries have joined together to create a sixth-generation fighter plane.

All three nations have publicly committed to cooperating on the Global Combat Air Program.

The three nations hope to offer a “step change” in air power by combining their knowledge of defence and aerospace.

The three nations said in their statement that they hope to develop a plane that can “take to the skies by 2035.”

The sixth-generation fighter jet will have sensors, data systems, armament systems, and an aircraft that can fly itself. The aircraft will have similar capabilities to those shown by the UK, Italy, and Japan. It will also be similar to the US Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme, which is currently in development and aims to deliver a family of human-crewed and unmanned aircraft.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that working with Italy and Japan to develop and design the next generation of combat aircraft was the “best collaboration of cutting-edge defence technology and expertise shared across our nations.” As a result, the sector gained highly skilled workers, and Britain and its allies’ long-term security was increased.

The United Kingdom and Japan are reportedly planning to merge their sixth-generation fighter jet programmes by the year’s end, as reported earlier in the year. The United statement confirmed the integrity of the media accounts.

The British Tempest programme aimed to have a prototype ready by 2027, whereas the Japanese F-X programme aimed to have a test plane available by 2028. Will the new alliance maintain the same schedule, with a test aircraft coming out by the end of the decade and full production beginning in the early 2030s?

Rishi Sunak, the prime minister of Britain, hailed the trilateral agreement, saying it will usher in a “new era” for aviation in his country and Europe.

This government’s top priority is ensuring that people in the United Kingdom are safe now and in the future. To “outpace and outmanoeuvre those who aim to do us harm,” Sunak said, “we need to remain at the bleeding edge of breakthroughs in defence technology.”

So far as we know, this is the first time Japan has worked with a country other than the United States to make a fighter plane. The United Kingdom is the United States’s closest ally, and the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan all collaborated with the United States on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter project.

All current and future NATO fighter planes can work with the planes the Global Combat Air Program made.

As such, the international collaboration we have formed today with Italy and Japan intends to emphasise the inseparability of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security. The Prime Minister said that the next generation of combat aircraft we create would safeguard ourselves and our allies worldwide by tapping into the might of Britain’s top-tier defence sector, adding that this will also create new employment while saving lives.