Mitsubishi Electric and Leonardo UK announced that the two companies will team up for a radar technology demonstration concept that could form future joint development efforts between the UK and Japan. The announcement was declared on July 18 at the Farnborough Airshow in England, following the consummation of joint concept and feasibility studies between the parties this year and represents approval from their respective national defence ministries to move forward with the program, the announcement said.
“Jaguar represents the first big building block of an international radar program that meets the ambitions laid out by Japan and the UK as part of F-X/FCAS discussions,” Leonardo UK said. Recently, Britain and Japan have cemented their cooperation in aerial combat technology in current years. In December, the two countries signed a Memorandum of Cooperation indicating their intent to collaborate on combat aircraft. Reuters reported last week that the countries could decide to merge their next-generation fighter programs by the end of the year. Japan’s program is called F-X and Britain’s is the Future Combat Air System or FCAS.
Leonardo UK, a radar and electronics company based in the UK, is part of Team Tempest, the industry group the UK assembled to begin developing its advanced fighter capabilities. In a statement, the company indicated the radar program, called Jaguar, maybe the start of more combat aircraft collaboration between the countries. Jaguar will feed into the development of Tempest’s Integrated Sensing and Non-Kinetic Effects & Integrated Communications System, which is developed to fetch concurrently numerous sensor capacities, the company said.
