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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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