Italy's Ministry of Defence has early this month presented its dossier to Parliament about the funding needs of the Global Combat Aircraft Program (GCAP), as required by Italian law. The competent Commission from the Italian Senate is due to express its opinion on the matter by 22 February.

The dossier is important because it provides a more up to date and realistic prospect of what full development of the GCAP platform is going to cost. The Ministry refers to Phase 1 “Concept Assessment & Preliminary Design” and Phase 2, “Full Development”, in combination, with Phase 1 having been originally authorized and funded beginning in 2021. It is now estimating, at 2025 money values, a total cost of € 18.6 billion.

Subtracting money already allocated since 2021 (€2 billion), the need is for 16.6 billion Euro, beginning in Financial Year 2026. The Ministry of Defence further notes that Defence funding already allocated from 2026 to 2037 amounts to € 8.769 billion Euro, which leaves a provisional amount of 7.831 billion Euro to be found and allocated by integrative Decrees, including potentially (and probably, given Italian defence management “customs”) funding allocated through Economic Development financing to sustain national industry and know-how. This is a common feature of Italian procurement programs delivered with a key, leading role of national firms (examples range from TYPHOON to the FREMM frigates).

This apparent explosion of costs is causing some "pricetag shock" in some lawmakers and commentators, but was to be expected. Italy demanded, and eventually obtained equal say within the GCAP enterprise, which has adopted an equal split between the Partner nations. This was always bound to require shouldering an equal share of the costs as well, and even from outside the project it was clear that the money allocated so far was far from sufficient.

Last known estimates from the United Kingdom side, now effectively years old due to the enduring delays to the release of an updated equipment plan (now Defence Investment Plan, DiP), included more than £12 billion allocated out to 2033. That provided a useful ballpark indication, especially considering Italian funding is spread on more years, out to 2037, which is also notably 2 years beyond when development is actually supposed to be complete, in 2035.

The € 18.6 billion in the Italian estimates correspond, very empirically, to over 16 billion pounds for the United Kingdom, a value we should expect to see reflected in some way in the DiP when it will finally be published.

Assuming, for obvious reasons, that Japan will also be budgeting directly comparable amounts, GCAP development costs overall could be beyond the £50/€60 billion mark, an amount directly comparable to the development cost the US has faced with the F-35. Again, this is in very empiric terms as the relative value of money has changed due to inflation over the years and decades that have passed and due to the difference between developing 3 aircraft, albeit with significant commonality, versus one.

This in some ways might reassure early critics of GCAP, which noted early on that development costs could hardly realistically expect to be that far below the F-35’s own, but will undoubtedly inflame new critique by virtue of the sheer size and weight of this project on the respective defence budgets. The bottom line is that we do not know how much GCAP will cost and we most likely won't know for years.

Italy envisages 2 further phases following in GCAP program: initial production, and full rate production. No cost estimate is even attempted for those phases at this time. Only once we had a mention of UK anticipated total program cost: £72 billion, in the now very old (and very outdated) Major Projects Report spreadsheet current to March 2021.

What is increasingly clear is that a 6th generation fighter enterprise is a huge effort, very expensive, and that its impact on everything else in the Defence budget will be severe. In the UK, GCAP is, and will increasingly be, the biggest, is by orders of magnitude, expenditure voice for Defence, second only to "Nuclear" as a whole.

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