EF2000 enters German holding pattern
Andrzej Jeziorski/MUNICH
The German Government now looks unlikely to make a decision before March 1997 to proceed with the production-investment phase of the Eurofighter EF2000 programme, despite pressure from the industrial partners.
Within two weeks of admitting that a decision would not come before the end of January 1997, dropping the anticipated mid-November deadline, the German Federal Ministry of Defence now says that it could stretch to March.
The delay is bound to anger the Eurofighter industrial-partner companies, which had agreed to maintain a months-old price offer.
"I would say that March is the limit of tolerance as far as the partners are concerned," says one programme source.
German defence minister Volker Rühe is still struggling to scrape together the necessary minimum DM350 million ($233 million) of funding which Daimler-Benz Aerospace says that it needs for production investment in 1997. So far, Rühe has not been able to offer more than DM100 million.
The most likely solution is the redirection of funding from other projects, such as the Franco-German Helios II/Horus reconnaissance-satellite, which has always been seen as more of a political need than a defence requirement. Rühe now says that the EF2000 is "far more important for me as defence minister" than the satellites.
The fate of the satellites and other Franco-German defence projects is expected to be decided at the forthcoming Franco-German summit meeting scheduled for 9 December.
Source: Flight International