The Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) is a multi-national collaborative project involving Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan, with the shared ambition of producing the next-generation fighter aircraft by 2035. Leonardo is a strategic partner of GCAP, alongside BAE Systems in the UK and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co. Ltd. in Japan.

The new ‘system of systems’ will operate across five domains – air, land, sea, space and cyber – and will have the next-generation fighter as its ‘core platform’, connected to other, crewed and uncrewed peripheral systems. 

With its fully digital technological capability, the aircraft will be capable of conducting missions with other assets in a coordinated and collaborative manner, aided by a command, control and communications infrastructure based on artificial intelligence, supercomputing, combat cloud architecture, and adaptive, ultra-fast cyber-resilient datalinks, for high-volume data transmission.

GCAP will drive the technological development and long-term growth of the economies of the countries involved, creating highly skilled jobs and supporting production ecosystems throughout the supply chain. On the Italian front, Leonardo will operate alongside other leading companies in the sector such as Avio Aero, Elettronica and MBDA Italia, and their related supply chains (universities, research centres, SMEs and start-ups).

GCAP is one of the most challenging and futuristic programmes in the Aerospace, Defence and Security sector, ensuring technological sovereignty for generations to come.