The Eurofighter Typhoon is old enough to vote in most European elections. Conceived in 1983, first flown in 1994, in service since 2003 — by every conventional metric it is a fourth-generation aircraft that should already be giving way to fifth. Instead, on 20 May 2026 at Airbus’ Manching plant in Bavaria, Germany unveiled the latest Tranche 4 Eurofighter and made a quiet announcement to the European defence establishment: this jet is going to fly into the 2050s, and Berlin is doubling down on it while the FCAS sixth-generation programme falls apart around it.

A 1990s airframe with 2020s sensors

What makes the Tranche 4 a different beast from the Tranche 1 jets that entered service in the 2000s is one technology more than any other: AESA radar. The original Eurofighter used a mechanically scanned Captor-M — superb for its era, but a generation behind the AESAs that have been standard on every American fighter since the F/A-18E/F. The Captor-E Mk1, finally integrated on the Tranche 4, gives the Typhoon simultaneous multi-target tracking, ground mapping, jamming-resistant operation, and a far longer detection range against low-observable threats.

That last point matters. With a modern AESA, the Typhoon can credibly detect and engage a Russian Su-57 in front-aspect at usable ranges. Without one, it could not. The upgrade transforms the jet from a fourth-generation legacy platform into something the German Luftwaffe can credibly call generation 4.5 — and intends to fly alongside its incoming F-35As for decades.

The Taurus integration

The other major Tranche 4 capability is the long-promised integration of the Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missile. Taurus is a 1,400-kilogram subsonic stealth cruise missile with a 500-kilometre range, designed and built by a German-Swedish consortium and specifically optimised against hardened targets — bunkers, command posts, hardened aircraft shelters. It has been operational on the Luftwaffe’s Tornado IDS fleet since 2005 but never on the Typhoon.

With Tornado retirement now imminent and the political constellation in Berlin shifting on the question of supplying Taurus to Ukraine, the Eurofighter integration becomes strategically important. Germany’s long-range standoff strike capability — the ability to put a thousand-kilogram warhead on a hardened target 500 kilometres inside contested airspace without putting the launching aircraft within the threat envelope — was about to disappear with the Tornado. The Tranche 4 saves it.

Doubling down because FCAS is breaking

The strategic backdrop to the Tranche 4 unveiling is impossible to ignore: the Future Combat Air System — the planned Franco-German-Spanish sixth-generation fighter programme — is in serious trouble. France’s Dassault and Germany’s Airbus Defence and Space have been fighting publicly over workshare, intellectual property, and design leadership since 2024. Italy and the United Kingdom have left to pursue their own GCAP programme with Japan. Spain remains in FCAS but is increasingly uneasy. Belgium’s recent observer-status admission is more political theatre than industrial commitment.

If FCAS collapses entirely — which is now a real possibility — Germany’s Luftwaffe will need to rely on a combination of F-35A (which it is already buying) and Eurofighter (Tranche 4 now, Tranche 5 likely to follow) well into the 2050s. The Tranche 4 unveiling is not just a product launch. It is a strategic insurance policy.

Sources: The War Zone (Thomas Newdick); Airbus Defence and Space press materials; Bundesministerium der Verteidigung press conference, Manching, 20 May 2026.