By Deborah Haynes, Security and Defense Editor

A multi-billion pound programme to build the UK’s flagship ship with Japan and Italy could be jeopardised by a major overhaul of the defence industry.

Defence Secretary Luke Pollard called the project “really important” but said it would be inappropriate for him to pre-empt the outcome of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) by describing in a speech what military equipment would be needed to fight future wars.

This left open the possibility that the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), a key part of British defence industry giant BAE Systems, could be vulnerable if the review found that committing limited resources to a project that will only deliver new aircraft over the next decade is not the best way to avert a more immediate threat of war with Russia.

At the same time, the architects of the research will have to balance the need to counter current threats with the importance of investing in independent aircraft manufacturing skills, and the economic benefits of the GCAP program, which is already creating thousands of jobs.

The minister gave no guarantee that the future of the British-Japanese-Italian fighter jet project is secure, despite the fact that the project was strongly endorsed in the previous government’s ‘refreshed’ defence report, published only last year.

The UK’s planned GCAP fighter jet, known as Tempest, is a sixth-generation stealth aircraft equipped with advanced weapons and radars that can fly at supersonic speeds, an improvement on the F-35 fighter jet.