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Germany, the first Eurofighter partner nation to top up its purchase, looks set to buy additional aircraft in an upcoming fifth Tranche, along with Italy and Spain.
Industry is calling it Eurofighter’s renaissance. With top-up orders in place from two—and potentially soon three—of the four partner nations, and a slew of export prospects pushing production into the 2030s, the Eurofighter partner companies are weighing the need to accelerate output of the combat aircraft to keep pace with demand.
The mood was much more glum a decade ago, when it was questionable if Eurofighter production would even last into the 2020s.
- Italy plans for 24 Eurofighters to replace Tranche 1 fleet
- Next upgrade package is to add weapons and the ability to suppress and defeat enemy air defenses
Fortunately, export contracts from Kuwait and Qatar helped buoy the program, while the need to retire the older and difficult-to-upgrade Tranche 1 standard aircraft prompted Germany to purchase 38 new-build Tranche 4 fighters. Spain soon followed, ordering 20 Eurofighters to replace elderly Boeing F/A-18 Hornets for its Halcon program.
Now a Tranche 5 production batch is in the offing. Spain says it plans to purchase another 25 Eurofighters as additional Hornet replacements through its Halcon II program. And at the ILA Berlin Airshow in June Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared Germany would acquire 20 more aircraft before the end of the current legislative period in October 2025.
Italy, meanwhile, has advised the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency, which represents the aircraft’s customer nations, of its plans to acquire 24 of the fighters to replace its Tranche 1 fleet.
“Eurofighter is seeing a golden moment,” Lorenzo Mariani, Leonardo co-general manager, told Aviation Week at the ILA Berlin Airshow. “With these orders, the partner nations are confirming their trust in the Eurofighter, an indication that the aircraft is still a key component of the air defense backbone of Europe and NATO.”
And it is not just the partner nations—potential export customers are actively evaluating the Eurofighter, too. Saudi Arabia, already an operator, is weighing a top-up order while competing the aircraft with Boeing’s F-15EX and Dassault’s Rafale. Some close to the Eurofighter program have said Saudi involvement in the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) could be a prerequisite for an order.
Poland is looking at the aircraft alongside the F-15EX or more Lockheed Martin F-16s or F-35s as well, aiming to create two more front-line fighter squadrons (AW&ST May 20-June 2, p. 50). Orders from Turkey and even a top-up buy from Qatar are also in the offing.
Combine these and it seems the fighter jet is making steady progress toward the 150-200 additional orders predicted at last year’s Paris Air Show by Giancarlo Mezzanatto, the CEO of Eurofighter GmbH, the company that manages the program.
It is no wonder, perhaps, that industry is now discussing production plans with the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency, Mariani said at ILA Berlin in June. “There are a set of actions that you will see which will make the production quicker and more stable in terms of batches,” he explained.
The march toward increased production rates and upgrades marks a remarkable turn of fortune for the Eurofighter at a time of increased competition from the F-35 and Rafale and in terms of budgets, as nations invest in projects such as the European Future Combat Air System (FCAS) and GCAP.
The need to maintain skills and bridge production gaps between the Eurofighter and so-called sixth-generation platforms is driving some of the top-up orders, while the development of upgrades also will support the FCAS and GCAP. The GCAP’s radar will take some of its building blocks from the UK-led development of the European Common Radar System Mk.2 radar, currently slated for retrofit into UK Tranche 3 aircraft.
With the new sales prospects, the partner nations must consider the prospect that the aircraft will need to be supported and kept relevant through the 2050s or 2060s.
The latest step in the Eurofighter’s upgrade path was announced at ILA Berlin with the signing of the system definition) contract for the Phase 4 Enhancements (P4E) package, the largest envisaged for the aircraft. Due to be delivered in 2029, the P4E would include at least three new weapons, introduce a suppression and destruction of enemy air defense capability (SEAD/DEAD) for the German Air Force and deliver a task-based management system to support active, electronically scanned array radars in development. These will include the European Common Radar System Mk.1 adopted by Germany and Spain and the Mk.2 sensor with its additional electronic attack capabilities being developed by the UK.
Weapons included in the system definition phase for the P4E include the MBDA Spear 3 air-to-ground weapon, the Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missile and the Northrop Grumman Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM). The latter will be a component for the so-called Eurofighter EK, the SEAD/DEAD-capable variant of the aircraft expected to replace the German Air Force’s Panavia Tornado ECR.
Other components of the Eurofighter EK are the Saab Arexis electronic warfare and emitter-locator systems. Other changes planned include updating the cockpit interface and the defensive aids subsystem, as well as exploring how the Typhoon service life can be extended.
Not all the changes on the P4E wish list will make it onto the aircraft, however, officials close to the program say. Much will depend on the capacity of industry and the complexity of the proposed upgrades. But once finalized, the P4E program will move into a design, development and qualification phase with work divided between industry in the four countries to prepare the upgrades for 2029.
Delivery of the P4E before the turn of the decade is particularly crucial for Germany, as the Eurofighter will take on several of the roles performed by the Tornado, which will be withdrawn by 2030. The initial P1E-P3E upgrades likewise transferred the Royal Air Force’s Tornado missions to the Eurofighter.
Industry officials are hoping development of the P4E will lead to realignment and harmonization of configurations across the partner nations to improve commonality. The UK currently leads as the most capable Eurofighter fleet among the partner nations. Fellow partners Germany, Italy and Spain have been slow to follow, largely due to national budgets, but this situation is beginning to change as governments take defense spending more seriously after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That push for commonality has even driven agreement for all four countries to adopt a single helmet-mounted display in the form of the BAE Systems Striker II.
Beyond the P4E, the next step in Eurofighter’s development will be the Long-Term Evolution (LTE), a midlife upgrade now envisaged for the 2030s, which the partners hope will encourage export customers to sign on the dotted line.
Progress on LTE development has been glacially slow, however, and is not helped by partner nations’ divergence in their next-generation combat aircraft plans. Germany and Spain are moving toward the FCAS with France while Italy and the UK are pursuing the GCAP.
However, it since has emerged that the first LTE technology contracts have been placed. The technology maturation contract with BAE will further the company’s internally funded effort to transition the Eurofighter toward a new mission system architecture.
BAE has been redesigning the Eurofighter’s mission system through its Medulla project, separating safety-critical from mission-critical software and running the software through multicore computer processors to expand the aircraft’s computing power. This approach should not only enable speedier upgrades but also support new advanced sensors and allow the installation of a wide-area display in the cockpit.
The company will take a phased approach to inflight testing of a wide-area display with the aim of flying the new cockpit later in 2025.
“We don’t think that you can leverage all the new capabilities [in the Eurofighter] . . . if you are dealing with three small 6 X 6-in. displays that came with an aircraft when it entered service in 2004,” Andrew Mallery-Blythe, BAE test pilot and Eurofighter operational requirements manager, said at BAE’s Warton site in May.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Airbus is working on a flight testbed that could enable the aircraft to work with uncrewed collaborative platforms or adjuncts.
The System and Teaming Advanced Research (STAR) Demonstrator will be a two-seat Eurofighter borrowed from the German Air Force. It is equipped with a decoupled rear cockpit that will be used to control uncrewed aircraft systems using data links and communication systems fitted into a pod underneath the aircraft. A German national test asset, STAR also will try out new avionics and human-machine interfaces, allowing for inflight evaluations of such modifications. Flight trials of STAR are expected to begin in 2028.
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