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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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