UK Presents Its Own Storm Fighter Unmanned Fighter Jet

The Royal Air Force (RAF) has launched a new program to develop an uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) known as Storm Fighter.

Luke Pollard, the UK Minister for Defense Readiness and Industry, announced this.

So-called Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), such as the Storm Fighter concept, are designed to operate alongside crewed RAF combat aircraft. These include the Eurofighter Typhoon, F-35B Lightning II, the future F-35A, and the sixth-generation Tempest fighter currently being developed under the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP).

The program is funded through the £300 million allocated for the development of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) under the Defense Investment Plan (DIP), published on July 2, 2026.

The envisioned roles of these uncrewed fighter aircraft include electronic warfare (EW), air-to-air and air-to-ground strike missions, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and, potentially, serving as decoys to protect crewed aircraft from kinetic threats.

The program builds on StormShroud, an electronic warfare (EW) uncrewed system based on the Portuguese Tekever AR3 UAV, which was unveiled last year.

It combines autonomous aircraft with Eurofighter Typhoon and F-35B Lightning II fighter jets to jam and suppress enemy radar systems and forms part of the UK’s £5 billion investment in advanced sovereign uncrewed aerial systems (UAS).

“Storm Fighter will make the Royal Air Force the first sixth-generation air force in Europe,” Luke Pollard announced.

As an example of an experimental program that could serve as the foundation for the Storm Fighter project, Pollard highlighted Project Vanquish, which aims to demonstrate by the end of 2027 an Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP) – the UK term broadly equivalent to a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) – with a fixed-wing design capable of taking off from and landing on a Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier.

Even before the official requirements for Storm Fighter have been released, several contractors have already expressed interest in the program, with BAE Systems and Boeing among the most prominent contenders.

In his keynote speech at #GlobalAirSpaceChiefs @LukePollard MP, set out a warfighting-focused vision for UK air and space power. Defence has a single mission: to become ready for warfighting against a peer adversary. Read his speech here: https://t.co/PGLoO9HPfv pic.twitter.com/uMDEknjgL2

— Air Power Assn (@airpowerassn) July 16, 2026

Air Chief Marshal Sir Harv Smyth, Chief of the Air Staff, said the RAF intends to field an operational Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) capability by the end of this decade, rather than waiting for the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) sixth-generation fighter to enter service in the mid-2030s.

Storm Fighter builds on the Project Mosquito loyal wingman program, which was canceled in 2022. The project had been under development since 2019 as part of the Lightweight Affordable Novel Combat Aircraft (LANCA) initiative.

Storm Fighter is one element of a broader Royal Air Force modernization effort centered on the UK’s participation in the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) alongside Japan and Italy.