On December 13, 2024, the CEO and General Manager of Leonardo, Roberto Cingolani, the CEO of BAE Systems, Charles Woodburn, and the President of Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co Ltd (JAIEC, a company jointly founded by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Society of Japanese Aerospace Companies, SJAC), Kimito Nakae, signed the agreement to set up the Joint Venture for the GCAP (Global Combat Air Program).

The 3 companies - as well as lead system integrators - will each hold an equal share of 33.3%. This corporate structure constitutes the industrial interface of GIGO (GCAP International Government Organisation), the International Government Organisation for the political-governmental management of the GCAP programme, whose treaty was signed exactly on year ago, on 14 December 2023, by the current Italian Defence Minister, Guido Crosetto, and the then Defence Ministers of the UK and Japan, Grant Shapps and Minoru Kihara.

As was already known at the time of the signing of the Political-Governmental Treaty, the Joint Venture's headquarters, as well as that of the GIGO, will be based in the UK. Furthermore, as expected, the first CEO of the industrial partnership will be an Italian national - at the moment, there are no rumours as to who will hold this position - while the General Manager of the GIGO is, instead, Oka Masami, a Japanese national.

The industrial collaboration between the 3 lead system integrators will be aimed at the design and development of the core platform, i.e. the 6th Generation fighter, intended to operate as the mother platform in a context of multi-domain scenarios.

In addition, the new Joint Venture will retain the role of design authority for the GCAP throughout the life cycle of the aircraft, which is currently scheduled to enter into service in 2035. Leonardo is involved in the Programme together with the leading industries in the sector: Avio Aero, ELT Group, MBDA Italy, but also with the entire national supply chain (SMEs, research centres, universities, start-ups) and, internationally, with Leonardo UK.

Since 2022 to date, GCAP has involved about 450 entities of the Italian national supply chain with a volume of work of almost €200 billion, oriented towards the research and development phase. To date, there are about 9,000 people working on GCAP worldwide, of which about 3,000 in Italy.

During the ceremony, Roberto Cingolani stated that the agreement represents the ‘result of an intense journey made possible by the sharing of our reciprocal experiences’ and that it ‘not only enhances our technological capabilities, but also strengthens our commitment to global security and innovation’. Leonardo's CEO emphasised, as he has done in the past, that in a world where scenarios evolve at a dizzying pace, tensions increase and competition grows, "peace must also be defended".

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