German Chancellor Olaf Scholz used the opening day of the ILA air show in Berlin to place an order for 20 more Eurofighter-fighter aircraft. Scholz was thus responding to an order placed by Airbus Defense & Space-CEO Michael Schöllhorn’s repeated calls for further orders in order to secure the German production site in Manching beyond 2030 (-> Airbus pushes for German Eurofighter order).
The announced order is to be understood as an additional order to the 38 units already under contract as part of the “Quadriga” project in Berlin, whose production of parts in the consortium and final assembly in Manching began a year ago.
German government also supports exports (again)
“The German government has the greatest interest in a strong aerospace industry in Germany and Europe. I am therefore committed to maintaining and expanding production capacities. We will order a further 20 Eurofighters before the end of this legislative period, in addition to the 38 aircraft already in the pipeline,” said Chancellor Scholz at a media event at the ILA. Scholz continued: “We will thus ensure the utilization of this production capacity and also support further export prospects for the Eurofighter.”
This could also mean that the order order for more than 50 aircraft for Saudi Arabia, which had long been by his government. In an interview with Militär Aktuell a year ago, Eurofighter’s CEO Giancarlo Mezzanatto also mentioned numerous other potential sales markets a year ago.
One of them could even be his home country and Eurofighter consortium founding member Italy. David Hulme, Typhoon Product Strategy Director and Eurofighter Project Director at BAE Systems said at the end of May that Italy wanted to increase its Eurofighter fleet of 96 aircraft (currently 94 are still in service. A parliamentary process for this is to be initiated in Rome in the summer, and approval from Giorgia Meloni’s government is to be applied for in the third quarter of 2024. According to reports, the Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare Italiana, AMI) is considering preparing for the upcoming retirement of its 36 Tornado Strike (IDS) and 16 Tornado EloKa (ECR) aircraft with a further 24 Typhoons in a configuration similar to that now ordered by Germany. Alternatively, some or all of its 26 (including ten two-seater) Eurofighter Tranche 1 jets could also be replaced. These have already been offered – unsuccessfully – to other countries in the past, such as Romania, which opted for F-35s last summer. which opted for F-35s from Lockheed Martin last summer.
For its “nuclear sharing program”, Germany has recently also ordered 35 F-35A aircraft . Scholz responded with the following statement: “Due to time constraints, some weapons systems are now also being procured from partners who already have products available on the market. There are some things we simply cannot wait for.” And then in general and even insightfully: “Politicians in Germany have given the industry too much of a wide berth in the past. That’s over now. Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which violated international law, has presented the whole of Germany with a new security policy reality. Closer cooperation between European partners is therefore necessary. We in Europe simply can no longer afford to have a significantly larger number of competing weapons systems than the USA, for example. There must be fewer systems that reflect the strengths of the respective industries. Then we will also achieve the necessary interoperability between Europe’s armed forces and higher unit numbers.”
“Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which violates international law, has confronted the whole of Germany with a new security policy reality.”
Deutschlands Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz
Naturally, the main contractor in the Eurofighter consortium was delighted: “We welcome this decision as an important step in the right direction to maintain German expertise in military aircraft construction and to further develop the Eurofighter,” said Airbus Defence & Space in an initial reaction on the social media platform X.
Giancarlo Mezzanatto: “The Typhoon, the backbone of European air defense, will protect our airspace well into the 2060s, and it is therefore crucial that we continue to improve the platform’s capabilities and ensure that it is operational.” 
System definition – Phase 4 Enhancement
The new program segment, now referred to as the SD (System Definition) package of Phase 4 Enhancement (P4E), contains a number of innovations. For example, automated sensor management for all (upcoming) Typhoon radars will harness the capabilities of the AESA radar to perform multiple tasks simultaneously and – in conjunction with an improved cockpit interface – reduce the workload of managing the various sensors. P4E will also bring improved radio frequency interoperability (RFIO) and an upgrade of the self-protection system (DASS), including an additional – as yet undefined – electronic warfare capability.
No tranche 5 yet
Although there was speculation at the ILA that these 20 additional aircraft might already have something could have something to do with Tranche 5this is unlikely due to the fact that the LTE (Long Term Evolution) capability package has yet to be implemented . Rather, with the additional Eurofighters – best described as Tranche 4+ – the German Air Force can maintain its fleet size during the project to convert 15 Tranche 3 aircraft currently in service to the standard for electronic warfare (EK model) and suppression of enemy air defenses (ECR or SEAD/DEAD) (-> German Eurofighters will receive the Arexis sensor suite from Saab for this purpose).
The manufacturer is also likely to have signaled to Austria that the 20 aircraft now ordered by Germany could be turned into 44 if the German Armed Forces would want to rely on new Eurofighters to replace its Tranche 1 Eurofighters. This announcement is probably still a few years too early, even though the relevant levels in the army agree that the next federal government will not be able to avoid a decision on the red-white-red Eurofighter successor.
Here for more Eurofighter news and here to further news about Airbus Defense and Space.
