Italy, Japan and the UK have announced that they will combine their fighter aircraft development projects in a partnership that represents Japan’s first major industrial defense cooperation outside the United States since World War II.
The deal aims to put an advanced front-line fighter aircraft into service by 2035 by combining the UK-led Future Combat Air System project, also known as Tempest, with Japan’s F-X program, the three countries said in a joint statement on Friday.
The collaboration will be called Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP).
“We are committed to maintaining the rules-based, free and open international order, which is more important than ever at a time when these principles are being challenged and threats and aggression are increasing,” the three countries’ heads of state and government said in the statement.
The deal comes as China intensifies its military activities around Taiwan — which it claims as its own — and in the disputed South China Sea, where Beijing has tried to underpin its expansive claims with military installations it has built on artificial islands.
Northeast Asia is also struggling with North Korea, which has carried out an unprecedented number of missile launches this year amid fears of testing a nuclear weapon soon.
Japan, which has a pacifist constitution, has already announced that it will double its defense spending to around 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over the next five years.
The statement said the project was designed with “our allies and partners at the center” and with “future interoperability” across the United States, Europe, NATO, and the Asia-Pacific region.
“We share the goal of making this aircraft the heart of a more comprehensive combat flight system that will work in multiple areas,” the statement said.
The US, which has pledged to defend all three countries through its NATO membership and a separate security pact with Japan, also welcomed the deal between Europe and Japan.
“The United States supports Japan’s security and defense cooperation with like-minded allies and partners, including the UK and Italy,” the US Department of Defense said in a joint statement with the Japanese Department of Defense.