Industrial partners BAE Systems, Leonardo, and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement launched their joint venture (JV) – named Edgewing – directing the development of a shared sixth generation crewed fighter jet through the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP).
BAE Systems marked the milestone in an announcement on 20 June 2025.
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The establishment of Edgewing is the latest action in the programme, which first emerged among Italy, Japan and the UK in December 2022. A year later the trio signed a treaty locking them into a legal framework enforced by the GCAP International Government Organisation (GIGO).
In the lead up to the JV launch, the European Commission (EC) gave its approval to the programme, within which only Italy is a European Union member state.
This came as a surprise since three other member states – France, Germany, and Spain – are pursuing an alternative Future Combat Air System (FCAS), with which the EC determined that there are no apparent competition concerns. However, expert observers have pointed out that this is the wrong move economically:
“If we replicate capabilities, if we have different countries focusing on the same issue, they have smaller production capabilities and this also drives the cost,” argued Dr Michael Martin Richter, a political economist at the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
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The new JV will be accountable for the design and development of the next generation combat aircraft and will remain the design authority for the life of the product, which is expected to go out beyond 2070.
Edgewing will have responsibility to subcontract the manufacturing and final assembly of the aircraft to BAE Systems, Leonardo, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the wider supply chain.
BAE Systems, Leonardo, and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement each hold a 33.3% shareholding in Edgewing.
The newly formed entity will play a central role in achieving the programme’s objectives – including the in-service date of 2035 – while setting a new benchmark for trilateral industrial partnership across Europe and Asia.
In addition, the company will have operations and joint teams working in each of the partner nations and will be headquartered in the UK, to ensure maximum alignment and collaboration with the GIGO.
Furthermore, industry partners have appointed Marco Zoff to be the first chief executive officer of Edgewing. Zoff was formerly the managing director of Leonardo’s aircraft division.
Pressures to deliver aircraft by 2035
Edgewing will begin to confront certain pressures at this point with concerns about whether the company can deliver the aircraft by 2035.
In a parliamentary written response on 13 June, the UK Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, Maria Eagle, said that work is ongoing to begin the development phase this year. But in a subtle turn of phrase, Eagle added that the programme’s ambition remains to deliver an aircraft into service “from 2035”, not necessarily by that time.
This elusive rhetoric to moderate expectations is disconcerting, especially when there are concerns among the UK defence community about whether the government can afford all of the equipment plans laid out in the recent Strategic Defence Review.
In mid-January 2025, the UK Defence Select Committee published a report assessing the viability of delivering a sixth-generation fighter jet by 2035.
“Whilst progress to date has been positive, previous multilateral defence programmes have frequently seen costs spiral and delays pile up,” the committee report warned. “GCAP will have to break the mould if it is to achieve its ambitious target date.”
