BAE Systems “actively pursues” up to 200 Eurofighter Typhoon sales as fighter upgrade continues

BAE Systems has been “actively pursuing” the potential to sell up to 200 more Eurofighter Typhoons in the coming years, company representatives told the press during a recent media day.

“Germany [and] Spain are actively looking at more core aircraft buys... and Italy [as well] going into a parliamentary process over the summer and looking at a potential further buy,” said David Hulme, Typhoon product strategy director and Eurofighter project director at BAE Systems, at the company’s Warton, UK, facility on 14 May.

Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were also among the countries to have shown interest in purchasing new Eurofighters, each with differing degrees of commitment. Hulme said that one of the key enablers of future sales would be capability, which could allow the fighter to remain relevant into the 2040s and potentially the 2050s.

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Continue to upgrade the Eurofighter Typhoon

Towards the end of the current decade, the Typhoon’s architecture will be near the end of its useful life. The fighter’s machine computing capabilities and its legacy centres will begin to be limited in range and capability.

“By the end of [the] decade, we would have delivered 680 aircraft to various customers,” Hulme noted, adding that if the company does not sell any further aircraft, there was a “huge opportunity” in the next 20–30 years to upgrade and enhance the capabilities of the currently existing Eurofighters.

BAE Systems has been future-proofing the Typhoon by reengineering certain aspects of the jet under the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) programme. These enhancements will include substantially increased computational power, upgrading the core of the weapon systems, and giving the aircraft new mission computing and software.

Some of these upgrades have fell under the Medulla project, which aimed to assess the future operational space and threat environment, and create solutions for the 2030s’ data- and software-intensive battlespace.

The current Programme 4 Enhancement (P4E) for the fighter has also been under negotiation and was said to be available to all nations by 2028. The Eurofighter consortium claimed that the Aerodynamic Modification Kit (AMK) was intended to be part of the P4E growth path and would enable an AMK initial clearance, assuring more flexible and heavier weapon configurations and new weapon integrations.

BAE Systems Eurofighter upgrades outside P4E

To ensure that the Typhoon is rapidly adaptable and modifiable, BAE Systems has created the Rapid Prototyping Rig, based on an existing Typhoon cockpit, and Avionics Development Rig featuring real fighter software.

These devices can be used to rapidly develop, test and update new and existing capabilities, eventually maturing certain design options. All these, BAE said, would help Eurofighter customers to leverage everything that the P4E programme will deliver, such as new sensors, the European Common Radar System (ECRS) Mk 2 radar (or Eurofighter ECR capability for Germany), new additional weapons, more compatibility and the Striker II helmet.

The prototyping rigs will not form part of P4E. BAE Systems said it considered these as a “technological investigation” for the Typhoon, the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) and the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), and for providing options for customers. There were clear parallels between Typhoon modernisation and GCAP.

Another BAE Systems representative said: “We develop capabilities for Typhoon, and GCAP and FCAS can adopt the ones that work for them.”

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