StormFighter
A £300 million UK programme to develop sovereign autonomous combat aircraft under the Defence Investment Plan.
Last refreshed: 24 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
StormFighter names the money and the aircraft in one move; will 300 million pounds be enough?
Timeline for StormFighter
Named as the £300m programme Brontanax sits against
Drones: Industry & Defence: Britain unveils its first sovereign combat droneBackground
StormFighter is the named 300 million pound programme under Britain's 5bn pound Defence Investment Plan to develop a sovereign autonomous combat aircraft. BAE Systems' Brontanax, unveiled at Farnborough on 22 July 2026, is the first hardware to sit against the funding line.
The programme sits above the Apache loyal-wingman work of Project NYX and this month's first low-cost air defence effector awards under LCADE, giving the Royal Air Force a domestic top tier to an autonomy stack it had previously bought piecemeal from allied suppliers.
StormFighter attaches an airframe to money that was already committed, rather than opening a fresh competition. It is Britain's answer to the US Air Force's June 2026 award of Collaborative Combat Aircraft production to Anduril and General Atomics, though the UK effort remains at the prototype stage against America's production line.
