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As the continental FCAS program stalls, the parallel sixth generation GCAP fighter being developed by Italy, the UK and Japan appears to be making progress after the establishment of three industrial consortia to handle the work this autumn….
Addressing the Rome International Fighter conference, one Italian military official provided insight on how Rome views GCAP as a chance to balance building sovereign technologies as well as sharing them with its U.K. and Japanese partners.
Col. Antonio Vivolo, the GCAP senior technical representative at the Italian defense ministry armaments office said that if nations were to keep abreast of fast changing, crucial technologies they needed a degree of national autonomy, even in partnerships like GCAP.
“The goal is not only to obtain a new fighter, the goal is to obtain and keep technological and industrial sovereignty so that when scenarios, threats and partners changes we can reconfigure our capability without renegotiating our freedom of action with a third party,” he said in his speech, which he cleared for publication.
“Without this depth of sovereignty, sixth-generation would remain a beautiful concept governed by someone else, and this was not an option,” he said.….