Eurofighter chief executive Giancarlo Mezzanatto expects the type’s recent sales renaissance to continue, with a potential follow-on deal with Saudi Arabia and opportunities in Poland and Turkey on the company’s radar.
Mezzanatto last year outlined an ambitious 200-aircraft target for future sales, including repeat buys by partner nations Germany, Italy and Spain.
Recent boosts have included German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announcing a surprise order for 20 jets in May, and Italy starting the approval process to also acquire 24 more. The nations, along with programme partners Spain and the UK, also agreed a major package of updates known as P4E.
Mezzanatto attributes the current sales revival to four factors: the Eurofighter’s operational importance; the programme partners’ capability development plan for the type; its role in sustaining Europe’s defence industry; and the programme’s economic impact.
Pointing to Eurofighter deployments in locations including Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, he also hails its “strong deterrence factor, evident in the role that Typhoon is playing especially in air policing and quick reaction [alert] missions on the eastern flank of NATO,”.
Eurofighter has to date sold 680 aircraft, and delivered 608 of those to nine operator nations.
A next key step will be the programme’s long-term evolution (LTE) activity, which he says will “bring a lot of capability to manage more data quickly, and to exploit future capabilities”.
“We are confident we will launch before the end of the year,” he says of the three-year LTE maturation phase.
Meanwhile, highlighting the high volume of defence equipment imported by European nations – especially from the USA – and its impact on local industry, Mezzanatto says: “If we want to prevent over-reliance on US technology, we need to reverse this trend.”
Notably, the UK is the only Eurofighter partner nation not to have made a recent repeat order for the Typhoon.
“Of course we are working with the new [UK] government on it,” he says, while noting that there will be a Strategic Defence Review process until next year. “We are making the case, because we think that the UK needs more airpower.”
Regarding its current export targets, Saudi Arabia is staging a competition to acquire 54 new fighters, with the Typhoon facing rivals in the Boeing F-15EX and Dassault Aviation Rafale.
Poland is understood to be seeking 34 air superiority fighters, while Turkey’s requirements could be for 40-50 aircraft. Success in the campaigns would enable the consortium to extend production activities until 2035, he says.
“We have had 20 years of operational life, but this is also a programme with a great future,” he says. “We are experiencing a real renaissance of the programme, and are working with the four nations to secure the future.
“There is a sense of urgency especially from the export customers,” he says, suggesting that this could potentially require core nations to divert some aircraft deliveries.
Meanwhile, Mezzanatto confirms that Italy’s new batch of 24 Eurofighters – being acquired to replace its oldest, Tranche 1 examples – will be of aircraft in the current production standard, and equipped with the Leonardo ECRS Mk0 radar. “They want their aircraft pretty soon,” he notes.
