In a factory on the banks of the River Ribble in Lancashire, robot arms stand on a floor striped with glowing lights. They will hold the tail fin for a test model for the UK’s next generation fighter jet, which is intended to fly for the first time in 2027. The jet, known as Tempest, will act as a symbol of Britain’s hopes to remain a top-tier military nation and keep alive more than a century of building military aircraft.
Yet things are markedly different in another hangar at the Warton site, run by British arms manufacturer BAE Systems. There, production of the Typhoon jet, a mainstay of the Royal Air Force (RAF) for two decades, has – for now at least – ground to a halt.
Unite, a union representing workers, has raised concerns that the UK risks losing skills, but the company, Britain’s dominant weapons maker, insists that it will find new orders that will sustain jobs on the production line. Richard Hamilton, a managing director in charge of the Typhoon programme, told reporters at the plant this week that he was “really confident” of receiving orders – but not from the UK. Instead, the UK government is trying to persuade Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to buy more, which would secure the future of the assembly lines at Warton for as long as a decade.
The questions over the future of the assembly line are emblematic of a trilemma that often seems to affect military procurement: the UK wants the best weapons; wants to boost British manufacturing, and needs to keep a lid on costs. Achieving more than two of those three aims simultaneously may be tricky, if not impossible.
Keir Starmer last month committed to raise defence spending to the equivalent of 3.5% of GDP in line with Nato allies, but even that increase – paid for by a cut in international aid that was deeply controversial among Labour MPs – has not assuaged concerns over the UK’s future capability to make fighters. That was heightened by the UK’s recent decision to go ahead with an order of US-made F-35s – long-range stealth fighter jets.
Richard Hamilton, managing director in charge of the Typhoon programme, said he was ‘really confident’ of receiving orders for the Typhoon. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
The UK last month said it will buy 12 US-made F-35A jets that are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, significantly adding to the UK’s nuclear arsenal. It also ordered another 15 F-35Bs, capable of vertical takeoff and landing. The jets are made by Lockheed Martin, but BAE Systems contributes communications, navigation and radar systems. Each F-35B version can cost as much as $109m (£81m), although the cost of the F-35A is thought to be about $83m.
The UK carries out about 15% of the work by value on each F-35. But costs are also much higher than planned: the MoD estimated whole-life costs of £57bn for the F-35 programme, but the National Audit Office put the actual price tag at £71bn.
Typhoon illustrates the way that European governments tried to keep the ability to make fighter jets while lacking the US’s economic power: the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain agreed to team up on the Eurofighter back in the 1990s, which meant fewer politically popular jobs, but also shared costs between several nations. The left wing is made in Italy, the right in Spain. Germany makes the central fuselage, while the engine is based on a design from Britain’s Rolls-Royce and front fuselages are built in Samlesbury, half an hour east of Warton. Each jet is then assembled by a prime contractor in one of the four countries, with BAE Systems as the lead for the jets bought by the UK. A 2011 public accounts committee report put the cost of each Typhoon at £73m – or £126m if development costs were factored in.
Export compromises
But BAE Systems also builds the planes ordered by allies via the UK government. Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia could order as many as 100 new Typhoons between them, Hamilton suggested, with about 50 more potentially assembled elsewhere.
Hamilton also said that the government should commit to supporting upgrades to existing Typhoon jets with the latest electronics, such as new radars, encrypted communications, and new displays for pilots. Those upgrades would clear the way for customers to make the orders, Hamilton suggested.
A source close to the defence minister, John Healey, indicated the government is likely to support the upgrades, which were recommended in the recent strategic defence review. The government is also confident in gaining more orders, the person said.
Export orders give an easy financial win for the government – even if the Eurofighter never quite lived up to export hopes – but they will also force compromises on the Labour government, which has had to curry favour with countries who have faced persistent criticism over human rights abuses. Turkey is a member of Nato, but president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pursued increasingly authoritarian policies, and his main political rival has been given a prison term. Qatar has its own record of human rights abuses, particularly around treatment of migrant workers, and its criminalisation of same-sex relationships.
Campaigners from across Northern England protest outside BAE Systems against the supply of parts for the F35 fighter jets used by Israel in the war in Gaza. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer
Most notably, oil-rich Saudi Arabia became – briefly – an international pariah after the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. US intelligence agencies came to the conclusion that Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, approved the murder. Saudi Arabia was blocked from ordering more Typhoons for several years by Germany, but the Eurofighter partner changed its tune last year after Hamas’s attack on Israel.
The UK government showed that exports appear to trump human rights concerns in a supreme court case last month. Activists argued ministers had broken the law by allowing the UK to continue supplying F-35 parts for planes used by Israel to bomb civilians in Gaza. Government lawyers successfully argued that preserving the UK’s place on the F-35 programme took precedence over the need to comply with UK laws on arms export controls, or any UK obligation to prevent an alleged genocide in Israel.
Activists have also protested at BAE’s headquarters. Asked whether weapons exports could undermine political support for the defence industry, BAE’s chief executive Charles Woodburn this month said that “the UK has one of the toughest export control regimes in the world for defence exports, and everything we do obviously has to be entirely compliant with UK export control policy for defence equipment”.
Tempestuous times
Exports will also form a crucial part of the Tempest programme, another joint project this time between the UK, Italy and Japan. It will be one of a crop of sixth-generation jets with advanced technology still under development. (The Typhoon and F-35 are considered to be fourth- and fifth-generation jets respectively.)
At Warton, a scale model of the Tempest jet, officially known as the global combat air programme (GCAP), shows an aircraft three or four metres longer than the Typhoon, with an expansive belly to hide weapons and reduce its visibility to radar, as well as carrying enough fuel for very long range missions.
A scale model of the Tempest fighter jet also known as the GCAP (global combat air programme). A proposed sixth-generation jet. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
The promise of exports of the Tempest will again play a key role in justifying the upfront costs. The UK has committed more than £2bn to Tempest since 2021 and has budgeted more than £12bn for the programme over the next decade, according to parliament’s defence committee. It wants the first jet to be completed in a decade’s time – very fast by fighter jet standards. Delays could lead to the kind of cost overruns that have dogged big weapons programmes. There are also questions over whether crewed fighter jets have a long-term future, given the huge increase in drone warfare during the war in Ukraine.
Tempest could also be competing with a Franco-German-Spanish rival, the Future Combat Air System – although that jet programme has been dogged by infighting between France’s Dassault and the German arm of Airbus that broke out into the open at the Paris airshow. But even if there are two European sixth-generation jets, plus the US’s Boeing F-47 announced this year by Donald Trump (the 47th president), BAE executives are confident there will be enough demand.
Herman Claesen, BAE’s managing director for future combat air systems, said countries from “every continent” had inquired about buying the GCAP aircraft. The UK’s arms export favourite, Saudi Arabia, has already asked to join the programme.
“There’s a bit of a queue forming of various nations who want to talk to the governments,” he said.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “The Typhoon is a world-class aircraft that will remain the backbone of the UK’s air defence until at least the 2040s.
“The UK is leading Typhoon export campaigns to other nations, and we will continue to work on upgrading the RAF’s existing Typhoons over at least the next 15 years, both of which will support thousands of skilled UK jobs.”