Shrinking Defense Budgets Threaten Eurofighter Export Prospects

Eurofighter's Typhoon is claimed as the most advanced combat aircraft available for export, with performance and capabilities exceeded only by the emergent Lockheed Martin F-22. It also costs less than the F-22, but its advanced technologies are not cheap, and its export campaigns are facing a discouraging environment of tightfisted worldwide defense schemes and currency problems.

In Greece, for example, due to have become Eurofighter's first export customer, a major blow resulted on March 29, when HAF plans to acquire up to 60 Typhoons, plus 30 options, among other military procurement programs, were put on last-minute hold by the government for at least three years. Finalization of the Dr1,700 billion ($4.4 billion) Typhoon contract was due in April, and Hellenic Aerospace Industry had already started preliminary offset work on behalf of Eurofighter.

On April 24, Defense Minister Tsohatzopoulos reaffirmed the Greek commitment to full partnership in Eurofighter, and validity of the original Typhoon requirement. Eurofighter may re-submit quotations for Greek Typhoon procurement, but its deferment beyond 2004 could result in a reopening of the HAF's competitive new combat aircraft program.

Typhoon sales prospects have re-emerged in Norway, however, where an original NKr10.7 billion (then $1.2 billion) requirement for 20 new combat aircraft, plus 10 options, was shelved in May 2000 through budget cuts. Although the NKr27.22 billion ($2.98 billion) 2001 military budget was well below the recommended level, high priority given to new combat aircraft acquisition has allowed renewed negotiations for two batches of 24 each Typhoons, plus 12 options. As before, the RNoAF reportedly prefers the Typhoon to the Lockheed Martin Block 50N F-16C/D, and Eurofighter is offering deliveries of later Tranche 3 versions from about 2008.

Eurofighter is proposing Tranche1 Typhoons, in competition with the Boeing F-15E/K, Dassault Rafale and Sukhoi Su-35, for South Korea's $3.2 billion F-X program, for 40 new multi-role fighters, with up to 80 options. Early Eurofighter production is mainly of air defense variants, pending development of appropriate air-to-ground weapons software. Emphasis is shifting, however, to a requirement for true multi- or swing-role capabilities, in which air defense/superiority and ground-attack missions can be undertaken on the same sortie.

Final assembly of the first production Typhoon (PT0001) of 148 Tranche 1 versions ordered for the four consortium countries, began by BAE Systems at Warton last September, when rear and center-fuselage sections were delivered by Alenia EADS and DASA EADS. The front fuselage arrived from BAE Samlesbury in October, and the wings from Alenia EADS and CASA EADS soon afterwards. Since three of the Eurofighter industrial partners are now part of EADS, some consolidation of the current four assembly lines may prove possible.

First flight of the first Instrumented Production Aircraft is due on August 31, to join the flight-test development fleet, and the RAF is expecting scheduled acceptance of its first Eurofighter in June 2002 to its Operational Evaluation Unit at Warton. Deliveries to the RAF's first Eurofighter operating base at Coningsby will start in 2004.