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We're pretty clear on what it needs to look like and the characteristics. Yes, we've shown some representative models to give people a sense of what we're talking about. And I think the reaction to that has been really interesting. People can see that this is really different from what they've seen before.

It's very much complementary and differentiated from what F-35 can give, very different size for a start and that allows all sorts of… To be clear, 
it's a big thing.
It is indeed a big thing and that's for some very good reasons that allow us to achieve the military effects we talked about before.
So from an industry point of view, a couple of important things to highlight there, I think. So there's something called Augustine's law. And Augustine was an individual in the US Air Force in the 60s, or even earlier, I believe, who plotted all the cost of combat aircraft over time. And he notices an exponential curve.
So we can't continue on an exponential curve. Governments will not continue to afford it. So at the heart of the programme is breaking that curve by doing things differently. So yes, it's about a large aircraft, a large system, but it's also about how we do it, how we deliver it.
And a lot of the work we've been doing in the UK over the last, not just last few years under the FCAS program, but beyond that, is developing those core technologies, those core skills around low observability. For example, with the Taranis program last decade, but also investments in digital and other areas to allow that to happen.

We've done a huge amount of analysis to understand what makes program success and you can basically summarise it into three main areas. The first one you need to have the right delivery construct. So how do the three industries from the three nations come together in a single empowered organisation?
The second one is unlocking the potential of digital engineering and manufacturing. doing things half the time is sort of a mantra we're striving for and the third one and only the third one is the core technologies and in all these areas we've made 
really good progress to underpin the shape and what you see and the first one we've launched Edgewing earlier in this year. Edgewing is the company that will take the contract from the international government organization that is fully empowered by its shareholders to deliver the programme to act as a single prime contractor in effect, 
which is different than what we've seen in the past. We've also started to populate and mobilise that company. So it only started in June or established in June. We currently have more than 150 people employed and we plan to have several thousand in that across the different geographical locations. On the digital side, this is a really challenging aspect and we are breaking absolutely new ground. We're creating a collaborative working environment between the three nations at the highest level of security and imagine engineers working, co-creating in that digital world, real time, unlocking the power of different time zones. But we're booking some successes there. I was witnessing only two weeks ago,
I went to see some of my team who are looking at the supportability of the aircraft. and I put some VR goggles on and I was literally walking around on an airbase in the UK with the aircraft in the hangar and the team were actually doing an engine change in a virtual environment.

I mean we haven't finished the design of the aircraft yet and already they are looking at these kind of things. Now that's game changing, that's a fundamental mindset change compared to how we've done these things in the past. So yes, you see a shape, you see an aircraft and people are focused on the flying bit, 
but what's more important is all the investment and the work we're doing to enable it to happen.

Yeah, I'd really agree with that. And we've obviously, the underpinnings of a programme like this, you've got to have firm foundations to make it succeed. And the three governments have worked incredibly hard over the last five years to negotiate the partnership in the first place and then to agree it at the most senior levels. What we've done, 
the equivalent as Herman describes on the industry side, is we needed to create an empowered single international government organisation known as the GCAP Agency, sometimes called the GCAP International Government Organisation, which will run the programme on our behalf. and use the word empowerment and I'll repeat it because it is just absolutely critical that we give the GCAP agency and Edgewing a genuine empowerment to be able to run the programme and that is what has, that's what will define its pace, it's what's undermined pace. That organisation was created a year ago almost today, it's established in Reading in its headquarters with a Japanese chief executive, Masumi Oka, We've got about 200 people across the three nations already working together there to act as the customer organisation.

We're running a programme in the UK at the moment, we refer to it as the Flying Demonstrator. So going back to your question about when we see something flying, we are building an aircraft as we speak. It is physically existing and we are applying some of these digital expertise on that. So I'll give you an example. 
In the traditional way, an aircraft fitter goes to the aircraft and he welds or rivets the aircraft together. In the new way, we're doing it now, the person first goes into a virtual cave, put the VR goggles on, and he manhandles in a digital world a piece of airframe into the space to make sure that it works, how he needs to put his hands, how he needs to manoeuvre it in before he or she goes to the aircraft. And this is just one little example. We have many more examples around software and mission systems capability where we in effect flying the aircraft real time in the real environment,
because that's what we can do with models, to pretend it's actually already flying. And with these demonstrated, it's not finished its build yet, but my engineers are now giving me the feedback that they already have enough information to certify the aircraft with light. And that's unheard of. Compared to the previous generations, this is black and white difference.

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Yes, Paul, I think it's time to discuss the GCAP. So gentlemen, two questions here. First of all, why GCAP is important for the UK and also for other free and open nations around the globe? And secondly, how does it compare to other similar programmes which are currently being developed, let's say in the US, also between France, 
Germany and Spain?

So the GCAP programme, so as Richard said earlier, so first of all, reiterating FCAS as a system, as a total system is not just one thing, it is a collection of things that ultimately deliver that operational capability that we need in the future. And then one of these very critical, 
important components is GCAP or the Global Combat Air programme. or the manned fighter, optionally unmanned, which is an essential part of that system. Sometimes we refer to it as the quarterback, the organizer, which looks across the total battle space and connects everything together, makes decisions. But it is a lot more than just an aircraft.

It is a strategic alliance. It's a connection between three nations, both from a government and industry point of view, that creates alliances, relationships, strategic alliances, strategic relationships around defence and security to achieve that operational goal. Just to build on that, 
I think as part of that combat air system we described earlier, it is vital that we have at the heart of it a capability that can achieve that range, survivability, connectivity and particularly compute power to take sensor inputs from across the force make decisions at pace, downrange, in order to be operation effective against this sort of threat.

That requires a really complex air system, combination of systems. And to do that, it's a very technically challenging and an expensive business. And it requires a partnership between countries to bring the best of their industrial strengths and their technical strengths and, yes, investment together.

Herman and I have been involved together in building this partnership with Italy and Japan. We chose the name carefully. It is genuinely a global program. People used to challenge of how can Europe sustain more than one combat air program. We thought we would break the mold and innovate and we're very fortunate to have 
Japan working alongside us and the Italians together. So it is a genuinely global approach to the capability. I think what sets GCAP apart from other programmes that are going on in parallel It is genuinely sixth generation. We, Japan, Italy, UK, all operate fifth generation. We have a good strong understanding of fifth generation capability and we know what
is needed to go the next step further. We've got the technology, we've proven a lot of those technologies and we've invested in them jointly over the last five years or so to make sure we've got them ready for the programme. Alongside that, I think, We are willing to work with other partners.

We are genuinely a partnership of peers who are operating in tandem. It's not a programme which is led by a single nation. And that gives us, I think, the strength of political support for the programme, which is incredibly important in something as challenging as this. It also allows us flexibility to have our sovereignty as three nations, 
incredibly important to us, but to not have to pay for that individually. And I think what we've seen is we're able to pool resources to achieve each of our respective national sovereignties but without paying the full price. We can also bring in other partners if we choose to do so.

And we've designed all of the partners agreed in the outset that we would look at bringing additional partners into the programme in due course if that was appropriate.
I think it was interesting to see as well, Rich and I attended in Tokyo in September the defence security conference that was hosted on the Prince of Wales carrier. And the Secretary of States of the UK for defence, the UK and Japan both stood on the podium and talked about the importance of
defence security relationship between the Asia Pacific nations and the North Atlantic. And they hailed or they mentioned GCAP as a critical enabler. of that security relationship between those two parts of the world. You know, we sometimes refer in the past as Typhoon having been the backbone or is the backbone of European air defense.

I think with this program, we now have the opportunity to make GCAB the backbone of North Atlantic and Asia Pacific defense, which is an important aspect. I think when we look at the kind of threats we are facing, we're facing today, but also in the long term future 
across both theatres indeed.

Unlike with FCAS, the system, we've got something that looks like an airframe that keeps being exhibited. What more can you tell us about where we are? What have you achieved in terms of systems capabilities when we see something fly?

We'll start with the technical and design maturity and then we can talk about where we've got to with the programmatic perhaps afterwards. Firstly, critically important is alignment of requirements. I have seen many programs internationally flounder on the fact that the requirements across the partner nations just couldn't be brought together.
So we've obviously spent a lot of time sharing our understanding of threat sharing our understanding of the requirements that are driven by that and working on them together as three nations. And I think it's an unparalleled, in my experience, genuinely joint development of a set of military requirements. Based on that, 
We have then been designing concepts, air vehicles that could meet those requirements. We have been iterating those concepts as you can imagine and I think the really exciting thing that technology allows us to do now is to test those concepts, genuinely fly them, or at least with a pilot in a simulator flying a GCAP concept against different threat environments, operating with other GCAPs, and that allows us to iterate the concept in incredible detail and at pace, which is extremely important. In terms of the next step, we are absolutely now working through a set of engineering milestones, further maturing the detail of the concept.

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Herman, let me turn now to you. So there's a lot of talk about the next generation capabilities and or the sixth generation capabilities. So what do these capabilities do and why are they critical for our national security? And also, what do they offer in terms of contributing to our deterrence?

Victoria, Paul, thank you for having me here as well and to be able to contribute to this very important and exciting topic indeed. So sixth generation capability, that's what we refer to, that's what the next generation combat air capability sometimes gets referred to. But what does that really mean? A little bit what Richard said earlier there.

So typically it means we need to go in denied environment, which means that the aircraft or the system needs to be able to be stealthy or have a low observable characteristics. it needs to be able to handle a huge amount of information, more data than we've ever seen before,
to help with that decision making and underpin the operator in achieving its operational goal. And that's the trend we've seen from third to fourth to fifth, from Tornado to Typhoon, to Typhoon to F-35 and now into the next world and GCAP, that trend of low observability data management continues to prevail.

So that's the operational capability and that is one cornerstone of the FCAS programme. Other cornerstones of the programme focus on the economic benefit to the nation and the importance to the nation beyond the operational capability. And that manifests itself in jobs, high value jobs.
Today more than three and a half thousand people in the UK are working on this programme. We know that the UK has a challenge with productivity. These jobs typically offer very high levels of productivity, about 87% higher than what we see of the national average, therefore contributing more towards the gross national product.

But we also have conducted various independent analysis on that economic benefit. And they consistently continue to demonstrate that a programme like Combat Air, just like Typhoon and Tornado, can generate lots of benefit to the economy. And recent studies have shown that we're talking about more than 36 billion contribution towards the gross annual GDP.
And that's not just BA systems, you know, we work very closely with the supply base, with partners in the UK, whether it's Rolls Royce through propulsion, whether it is with Leonardo on the sensing capability, but also in excess of 600 SMEs across the UK and academic institutions, which are a fundamental part of the FCAS ecosystem going forward.

It is also an inspiration to early careers, I sometimes keep saying because this programme will manifest itself for many decades to come, that the people who will be operating this system, the people who will have an engineering career on this programme or a leadership career just like I have, they haven't even been born yet.

And I think that's quite exciting and that gives the context of this programme and its longevity. So just not an operational capability, it offers significant economic benefit as well to the nation. And the final aspect to pick up within that context is around exports. And to date, Combatair has demonstrated through Typhoon, for example, 
that it is one of the only defence programmes that actually offers a return back to the nation. the export activities on combat air programs generates tax revenues and other benefits, which in effect pays back the investment to the taxpayer. And I think that's a very powerful business case to the nation in addition to the jobs, in addition to provide a highly capable operational capability. FCAS is covering quite a lot of critical areas for the nation.

Well, defence dividend in practice, I guess. 
I think so. And Richard, I think you wanted to come in on this. Well, can I go back to the issue of deterrence? Because I think it's such a fundamental reason that we're pursuing the system, the program that we are. Achieving conventional deterrence, massively important in the strategic political environment that we're in, being able to show that we have escalation pathways and de-escalation pathways, that we can manage our adversaries and we can deter them from aggressive behaviour. There are very few military capabilities that can genuinely prove to an adversary that we are able to impose threat, risk against things that they care about. realistically in the threat environment, the defensive environment that you described earlier, Paul. And having a combat air system that can, at range, in a responsive, agile, adaptable way, genuinely impose threat and risk to an adversary is something that is critically important to conventional deterrence in Europe for us.

And so we are absolutely designing a capability that has the ability to be able to strike targets against very heavily defended threat. And sixth generation is in part about being able to continue to hold the enemy at risk.

I suppose one, this is a question for both of you. One attribute of sixth stroke next generation air is that not every state that currently does fourth or fifth generation will be able to make it to that level. And how will that change the dynamics of alliances and indeed geopolitics?
There are only a few people who are going to be able to do this, aren't there?
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And perhaps this question of what is sixth generation? We can see with fifth generation, essentially the change was the addition of additional low observable characteristics and a degree of being able to sense and process huge amounts of information on board. What's sixth generation?

Well, it needs to be able to stay survivable against even more difficult threats. But perhaps the biggest thing that differentiates sixth generation from fifth is that it needs to be able to share that information, not just with itself and process itself, but also share it across a combat air environment and even more so in a multi-domain environment.

There are going to be very few countries that can genuinely do sixth generation. The UK is one of a really select handful that can do that. And I think we're seeing the US have clearly announced their FWQ7 programme, are moving at pace. That investment shows just how important,
but it's important that Europe has that sort of capability for itself. And that's why we built the partnership we did.

I think it's interesting to see at the moment if you look at the UN Security Council, every single nation on there currently is running a sixth generation combat air programme. So proving your point to some degree there. But what's also inherent in particular to the UK F-CAS strategy is that we never do this on our own.

We do this in partnership. That's how we've been doing combat air for many decades, again going to previous programmes. And when we move on to the global combat air programme, perhaps we'll talk about that later, it is again a partnership programme, in this case with Italy and Japan.

But if you look at a nation like Japan in this context, on their own they will not be able to develop a six-gen capability. but they have very good core strengths. They have a clear ambition industrially to create more sovereignty. They recognise the threats that are sitting on their doorstep and they see a
programme like GCAP together with the UK and Italy as a mechanism and methodology to achieve those strategic ambitions. And we've always said on the programme, on the GCAP programme, that it is a programme international by design. So we will always be looking for other partners, for other nations to, in some shape or form, 
depending on what level you enter, I guess, what entry ticket you buy, to be part of the journey and to develop, ultimately create the national sixth generation capability.
So I suppose that's a good cue to go to the next acronym, isn't it? We're slightly jumping the gun. Shall we go to GCAP?

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