BAE Systems has signed a contract extension worth £125 million ($211 million) to maintain, repair and upgrade the Royal Air Force’s Panavia Tornado GR4 fleet until the type’s retirement in 2019.
The revised ‘ATTAC B’ agreement should deliver an overall cost saving of £90 million against the terms of a previous deal, which had been due to expire in 2016, with BAE attributing this to “greater efficiencies in fleet management”. Its total contract for the remaining five-year period of GR4 operations is now worth £490 million, the company says.
BAE Systems
“The investment will ensure our Tornado aircraft continue to be battle-ready for the next five years, as a key part of the RAF’s fast jet fleet,” says UK defence secretary Philip Hammond. “They will continue to form the backbone of our ground attack capability until the [Lockheed Martin F-35] Joint Strike Fighter arrives, and the [Eurofighter] Typhoon’s ground attack capability is fully mature in a few years’ time.”
Flightglobal’s MiliCAS database records the RAF as having a current active inventory of 100 Tornado GR4/4As and eight GR4T trainers.
Source: Flight International
