Sixth-generation fighter, over 4,000 engineers risk being moved to other projects

The Italia government has already put around EUR 8.7 billion on the table to finance the preliminary design and development phases. Any additional resources will have to be given the green light by parliament, in a context in which the country has not emerged from the excessive deficit procedure, and in which the government is negotiating with the European Commission to extend the National Escape Clause to energy spending. The war in the Middle East, with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, has disrupted global supplies of energy and raw materials, weakened growth prospects, and driven up energy prices and inflation. The European National Escape Clause already provided for defence spending could allow Italia to exclude funding for GCAP from the deficit calculation.

Partner companies cannot keep specialised teams on indefinite standby: engineers working on sixth-generation systems (stealth, AI integration, directed energy) are scarce resources and widely contested by competing programmes (US F-47, Franco-German FCAS, Tempest legacy contracts).

Hence the alarm raised on 25 May by Edgewing president and managing director of BAE Systems' Future Combat Air Systems division Herman Claesen. More than 4,000 engineers currently employed by BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, and Leonardo on the programme, he clarified, could be relocated to other projects if the long-term contract is not finalised by the deadline. Leonardo has about 3,000 employees out of the total 9,000 committed to the programme (33 per cent of the total workforce). According to the indications that have emerged in the last few hours, it would seem that this scenario will eventually be overcome.

The Gcap project is a litmus test of the European defence industry's ability to become more autonomous from the US. As a mere hypothesis, a stalling of the project would highlight the failure of European cooperation on sixth-generation weapon systems. On the one hand, the FCAS, the roughly EUR 100 billion project, already in the balance: the French manufacturer Dassault claims 80% workshare on the engine against the position of Germany's Mtu Aero Engines and France's Safran). All this while the US F-47 programme accelerates with $5 billion in the US federal budget proposal for fiscal year 2027. With the consequence that European defence dependence on the US supply chain would be accentuated, starting with the F-35 fighter aircraft.

On the NATO side, a slowdown in the Gcap could weaken the credibility of the 'open' industrial cooperation model that the Atlantic Alliance has tried to promote vis-à-vis its Asian partners, especially South Korea and Australia, as part of the security strategy in the Indo-Pacific.