FIA 2026: Raytheon UK offers Red Kite as ‘high-low mix’ weapon for RAF

Raytheon UK has unveiled Red Kite, its first sovereign precision weapon fully designed and digitally engineered in the UK.

The company is aiming to position itself to expand its role as a design authority for the Royal Air Force (RAF) beyond its long-running Paveway IV programme.

The weapon was formally announced during Farnborough International Airshow (FIA) 2026, following an embargoed briefing for journalists at Raytheon UK’s Harlow site.

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Built on an established airframe

Red Kite reuses the airframe of Raytheon’s Stormbreaker, the glide bomb already integrated on the F-35B, F/A-18 and F-15, which is manufactured in Europe before export to the US. According to Raytheon UK’s head of weapons Richard Gates, who spoke at the Harlow briefing, the programme deliberately avoided redesigning the airframe in order to draw on Stormbreaker’s manufacturing scale and integration maturity, instead concentrating UK investment on replacing the weapon’s internal subsystems.

The guidance section has been designed and coded entirely by Raytheon UK engineers, where Gates said several patents were pending on the work. Control actuation is produced at the company’s Glenrothes site in Fife, while the fuse will be manufactured in Reddington and Glasgow and the warhead in Glascoed. Gates said the weapon has no integrated datalink at this stage, a deliberate cost decision, though the system has been designed to allow one to be added later as customer requirements evolve.

Executives briefing on the programme framed Red Kite as a response to a widening gap in the RAF’s inventory. Proliferation of threat systems over the past 15 to 20 years has pushed even fourth-generation combat aircraft further from their targets, they said, increasing the premium on weapons that combine greater range with a low enough unit cost to be stockpiled in depth.

Recent conflicts in Ukraine and Iran were cited as evidence that modern air campaigns can run longer than planners expect, reinforcing the case for what one Raytheon UK executive described as a “high-low mix” of weapon types. Red Kite is intended to sit below top-tier, powered weapons such as SPEAR Cap 3 – a distinct, powered capability rather than a competitor, according to Raytheon UK – while offering substantially greater stand-off range than Paveway IV. The company said the weapon is optimised primarily for Eurofighter Typhoon, with additional integration potential on F-35, and claimed a multiple of Paveway IV’s range, though it declined to confirm specific figures.

Digital engineering as the design philosophy

Raytheon UK has centred Red Kite’s development on model-based systems engineering, describing the programme’s digital twin as functionally inseparable from the weapon itself. Gates said the approach allows software changes to be tested and validated in a matter of hours rather than the six months typically required for a legacy Paveway update.

Raytheon UK’s digital engineering approach reflects a wider UK Ministry of Defence push to accelerate procurement: the Defence Equipment and Support organisation has said digital engineering is set to transform how equipment moves from concept to the frontline, allowing a design to be tested virtually thousands more times than would be possible physically.

Raytheon UK said further development work remains before the weapon is ready for service, though it argued its Typhoon integration experience and existing UK supply chain give it a compelling case to compress that timeline.

Shephard’s Farnborough International Airshow coverage is sponsored by MBDA

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