France walks out in Turin

On 2 August 1985 ministers from West Germany, Britain and Italy met in Turin and agreed to build a new European fighter without France. It was the second time the French had walked away. An earlier joint project with Dassault had collapsed in 1981 over Dassault’s insistence on design leadership and a quarrel over engines; this time France wanted a carrier-capable version and the leading role. Spain wavered, then rejoined in September 1985. France left to build its own aircraft, the jet that became the Rafale. The rival programmes would spend the next forty years competing for the same customers. In 1986 the remaining partners set up Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH in Munich to manage the project, with a sister consortium, EuroJet, for the EJ200 engine.

Britain builds the demonstrator anyway

Britain had not waited. In May 1983 British Aerospace won a Ministry of Defence contract for an Agile Combat Aircraft demonstrator, the Experimental Aircraft Programme, or EAP. When the West German and Italian governments wavered on their share of the cost, the British government and private industry found the money to keep it going. The EAP was rolled out at Warton in April 1986 and first flew on 6 August 1986. With its cranked delta wing, canard foreplanes and chin intake, it looked almost exactly like the Eurofighter that followed, and its flight data fed five years of design work. The partners initially planned to buy 250 aircraft each for Britain and Germany, 165 for Italy and 100 for Spain.

Reunification nearly kills it

Then the Berlin Wall fell. The cost of reunification led Chancellor Helmut Kohl to make an election promise to cancel the Eurofighter, and in 1991 Defence Minister Volker Rühe tried to pull Germany out in favour of a cheaper, lighter aircraft. The money already spent, the jobs at stake and the binding commitments between partners kept the project alive, but every nation cut its order: Britain to 232, Germany to 140 and later 180, Italy to 121 and Spain to 87. Workshare fights followed, because each country’s share of the work was tied to the number of jets it bought. Even the radar had to be settled at ministerial level, between Britain’s Tom King and West Germany’s Gerhard Stoltenberg.

Four assembly lines, one aeroplane

The first prototype finally flew in Bavaria on 27 March 1994, with DASA chief test pilot Peter Weger at the controls. The name Typhoon was adopted in September 1998, the year the first production contract was signed with NETMA, the NATO agency that buys the aircraft for the partner nations. The industrial model was unusual. There are four separate final assembly lines — one per partner company — but each partner builds the same parts for every aircraft, exports included: centre fuselage in Germany, right wing in Spain, front fuselage and tail fin in Britain, left wing in Italy. The Typhoon entered service on 4 August 2003, and the 100th production aircraft rolled out at Warton on 25 May 2011.

From Libya to drones over Syria

The Typhoon was conceived as a Cold War dogfighter, and it took years to make it a true multirole aircraft. Its combat debut came over Libya in 2011: on 21 March RAF Typhoons flew their first combat mission enforcing the no-fly zone, and on 12 April an RAF Typhoon dropped its first laser-guided bomb on Gaddafi’s forces. Italian Typhoons flew in the same campaign. RAF jets later fought over Iraq and Syria, and on 14 December 2021 an RAF Typhoon made the type’s first operational air-to-air kill, destroying a small hostile drone with an ASRAAM missile near the Al-Tanf base in Syria. In 2024 RAF Typhoons bombed Houthi sites in Yemen and shot down drones during Iran’s attack on Israel.

Fraud probes and Gulf contracts

Exports brought money and scandal. Austria chose the Typhoon in 2002 and agreed to buy 18 in July 2003, later cut to 15. Austrian prosecutors investigated claims that up to 100 million euros had been made available to lobbyists, and in February 2017 the defence minister, Hans Peter Doskozil, accused Airbus of fraudulent intent. Austria announced it would replace its jets. Saudi Arabia agreed to buy 72 Typhoons in 2006, amid reports that it had threatened to buy Rafales instead because of a British fraud investigation into the earlier Al Yamamah deals. Oman ordered 12, Kuwait signed a 7.96 billion euro contract for 28 in 2016, and Qatar ordered 24 in 2017.

A second wind

For a while the Typhoon looked like a programme in managed decline, waiting for a replacement. Then war returned to Europe and orders returned with it. Germany ordered 38 Tranche 4 aircraft under Project Quadriga in November 2020 and 20 more Tranche 5 jets in October 2025; Spain added 20 and then 25 under its Halcon contracts. On 27 October 2025 Turkey signed for 20 new Typhoons — Turkey put the price at 5.4 billion pounds, while the British government had cited a figure of about 8 billion. By 2026 total procurement had reached 769 aircraft for ten air forces, with more than 600 built. In February 2026 an aerodynamic upgrade, the AMK, went under contract.

المصانع

• BAE Systems Warton · Warton, Lancashire, UK — UK final assembly; EAP built here; 100th production Typhoon rolled out 2011
• Airbus Manching · Manching, Bavaria, Germany — German final assembly and flight test
• Airbus Getafe · Getafe, Madrid, Spain — Spanish final assembly; first Spanish Typhoon flew here in February 2003
• Eurofighter headquarters · Hallbergmoos, Bavaria — Programme management company

الناس

• Peter Weger · DASA chief test pilot — Flew the first Eurofighter prototype on 27 March 1994
• Jorge Tamarit Degenhardt · chief executive officer
• Volker Rühe · German defence minister — Tried to withdraw Germany from the programme in 1991

الأرقام القياسية والأولويات

• First Typhoon combat missions: Libya, March 2011
• First operational air-to-air kill by a Typhoon: hostile drone shot down with ASRAAM, Syria, 14 December 2021
• Four separate final assembly lines for one fighter, unique among modern combat aircraft