German defence minister Volker Rühe and Eurofighter industrial partner Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA) have agreed an overall weapons system price for the Eurofighter EF2000.
The price, including integrated logistics support, has been fixed at DM125.4 million ($79 million) -some 28%lower than earlier estimates - bringing the overall cost of Germany's planned offtake of 180 aircraft to DM23 billion.
While the Bonn Government still declines to confirm that the finance ministry is to help bail out the programme, which was hard hit by 1996's defence spending cuts, sources in Bonn say that Rühe has agreed a funding package with finance minister Theo Waigel. The finance ministry is to pay DM1 billion, divided equally over four years and starting in 1998, towards the programme.
This still provides no clue as to how Germany will fill the 1997 funding gap. Rühe is expected to give the crucial and much-delayed go-ahead for the production investment phase of the programme in the first quarter of this year, but has been unable to scrape together the DM390 million DASA insists it needs from the 1997 defence budget.
So far, Rühe has been unable to offer more than DM100 million for 1997, and this year's defence budget still has no fixed amount allocated to the Eurofighter. Sources close to the programme suggest that now DASA has been presented with a package guaranteeing funding in the longer term, it may be forced to cover the balance of the 1997 funding itself.
Source: Flight International