FCAS, Taranis Programs Announce Breakthroughs at Farnborough

Defence Minister Philip Hammond meets the media after the FCAS signing. AUVSI photo.

By Brett Davis



Two major European unmanned aircraft systems initiatives reported major breakthroughs on 15 July, although their futures are still unclear.

The defense ministers of the United Kingdom and France signed an agreement on the second day of the Farnborough Airshow that commits £120 million to a two-year study of the Future Combat Air System, or FCAS. Each country will also fund an additional £80 million in national work on related technology.

The program is expected to build off work both countries have done separately on similar systems, Britain’s Taranis and France’s Neuron. Other countries could join later, said British Defence Minister Philip Hammond, but “we agreed that going ahead in a bilateral partnership … is the way to get things done the most quickly and effectively, but we have not excluded the possibility of inviting other partners to join the program in a later stage.”

Hammond met with reporters at the United Kingdom pavilion after signing the agreement with his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian.

The potential UCAS that could develop from the work is seen as a possible follow on to both the Rafale and Typhoon fighter aircraft after both come out of service around 2030.

The program is expected to lead to more pan-European cooperation, as Italy’s Selex ES and France’s Thales will work together on the sensing systems for the FCAS. The two companies will split the work 50/50.

“The future of combat aircraft in Europe cannot be envisioned without strong cooperation between the key players,” Pierre-Eric Pommellet, Thales’ senior vice president of defense mission systems, said in a statement.

Stealthy Taranis

Later on the same day, British defense giant BAE Systems announced that the Taranis UAS, still highly classified after eight years of development, had demonstrated stealth capabilities in its second phase of flight trials.

The company had used the first round of trials to demonstrate the aircraft’s safety, then made changes to its body and engine exhaust to emphasize its stealth. The aircraft’s antennas and air data boom were removed and replaced with a system integrated into the body.

In the flight tests, the vehicle demonstrated not only stealth but a high degree of autonomy, including auto takeoff and landing and a mock attack on a target, although that part required a man in the loop.

The company is now negotiating with the Ministry of Defence over the future of the program, although its lessons learned will be funneled into the FCAS program, said Chris Garside, the engineering director for FCAS at BAE Systems.

“The success of the Taranis program has proved the U.K.’s industrial capability to design, develop and manufacture an unmanned, stealthy, combat air vehicle,” Garside said at a briefing at the BAE chalet. “We would expect the technology from Taranis, together with those demonstrated by the Neuron team, to make an important contribution to the future U.K.-French study phases.”