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Nikos Chatzis

“…A UK industry team continues to make progress on the development of a lightweight affordable novel combat aircraft (LANCA) demonstrator for the UK Ministry of Defence.

Team Mosquito, let by Spirit AeroSystems Belfast, was selected in January for the £30 million ($41 million) project. Initially also including Northrop Grumman UK, research and development firm Intrepid Minds was added to the consortium in April as avionics supplier.

Spirit says “work is proceeding at pace” against the project’s target of flying a full-scale demonstrator of the unmanned fighter by the end of 2023.

“The programme’s key milestones are naturally being reviewed as the demonstrator configuration is matured and refined on the path to manufacture and flight test,” says Spirit.

However, Spirit – formerly Bombardier Belfast – declines to say whether the team will also fly any sub-scale prototypes.

“We are currently working on several substantive development activities to support the project’s key demonstration objectives as we work towards the flight-test demonstration,” it says…”