EUROJET Turbo GmbH has signed a contract with the NATO Eurofighter & Tornado Management Agency (NETMA) to deliver 59 new EJ200 engines to the Spanish Air Force.
The engines will power the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter aircraft as part of the second phase of Spain’s Halcón acquisition project.
The EJ200 engine, produced by a consortium of Rolls-Royce, MTU Aero Engines, ITP Aero, and Avio Aero, has long been known for its exceptional performance since the first delivery in 2003.
With over 1,400 engines delivered to nine nations and more than 1.5 million engine flying hours, the EJ200 has proven itself as a reliable and high-performance powerplant for modern air forces.
The engines will be assembled at the ITP Aero facility in Ajalvir, Spain, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2029. The contract was signed at Getafe Air Force Base in Madrid by NETMA’s Air Vice Marshal Simon Ellard (ret.), EUROJET CEO Ralf Breiling, and Rolls-Royce Director Chris Davie.
Chris Davie of Rolls-Royce commented: “At Rolls-Royce, we are proud to contribute to the EUROJET consortium with the EJ200, representing outstanding and innovative capabilities that ensure our allies maintain their operational edge. This new contract reflects the confidence placed in our technology and reinforces our commitment to innovation, partnership, and supporting operational readiness for modern air forces.”
Ralf Breiling added: “The confidence that Spain and the core nations continue to show in the EJ200 engine and the Eurofighter platform is inspiring. The EJ200 provides a world-class, combat-proven asset for the Spanish Air Force, continuing the deep partnership between European industry and government.”
AVM Simon Ellard (ret.) concluded: “The signing of today’s contract finalises a successful collaborative procurement effort to provide 59 engines for Spain. The EJ200 is a key asset that powers the Eurofighter Typhoon, reinforcing NATO’s deterrence capabilities and securing our skies.”
Mean while what is the UK ordering or buying? nothing but hoping by 2027/30 every thing is all in order and working as if by magic.
U.K..is waiting the strategic defence cuts (review) , in a few years Britain will be a minor country in defence, only waiting for the sale/mothball of 1 of the Carriers to finish the scrap.
We will be ordering more F35B’s. And our Typhoons will be upgraded to the most capable standard of any Typhoon operator.
Yes but numbers Robert. Numbers count and we will have the most capable aircraft but pitifully few of them. It’s high time and interim additional batch of 36 aircraft were ordered to bridge the gap between tranche 1 retiring and Tempest coming online
The UK Ministry of Defence must prioritise the procurement of an additional 36 Typhoon aircraft. With the Qatar order nearing completion, the Warton facility faces a looming production gap until the Tempest program transitions into the manufacturing phase. This gap poses a substantial risk of redundancies at BAE Systems, which cannot sustain its highly skilled workforce without ongoing aircraft assembly, testing, and flight operations for the next decade. While Warton has other projects, those won’t encompass the specialised skills critical for advanced military aircraft production. The UK possesses a unique capability in this area, and the loss of such expertise would be detrimental, affecting not only the immediate Typhoon workforce but also the future development of Tempest, regardless of whether HMG commits to a modest order of 10 or a larger acquisition of 400 units.
We don’t know when Tempest is coming online. F35 production is more vital to Tempest than Typhoon. And the recent orders from Italy and Spain will keep Warton busy. It’s all and good banging on about numbers when we all know the budget is available for more Typhoons. And if money was available, the RAF would rather have more F35s.
Now this gives a very interesting figure 1.5 million engine flying hour
If you look at the RAF it generally burners around 20,000 operational typhoon flying hours per year ( it was in an FOI). As a typhoon has 2 engines that’s 40,000 engine hours a year, so between 2010 and 2020 it probably burned something like 400,000 engine flight hours and 200,000 airframe hours.. and if we project to 2025 600,000 engine flight hours..making the RAF typhoons very heavy used compared to other nations fleets..the RAF has about a quarter of the total airframes but it looks like it’s burning well over a third of the engine hours.
This is a bit of a problem as a typhoon has an airframe life of 6000 flying hours.. so essentially the RAF burns the equivalent of almost 4 airframes a year.
Could this be a problem
Well the total tranche one order was 57.. but 20 of these were not front line aircraft so only about 37 were front line, after it’s first decade in 2019 each of the front line tranche ones had flown on averages around 2550 hours each or about 95,000 flight hours..as the RAF would have probably flown around 200,000 front line flying hours in that decade that leaves around 100,000 hours spreed across the tranche 2 and 3 fleet.
So estimated hours on the tranche 2/4 fleet for one decade 100,000 hours..let’s make a big assumption assume the RAF has kept up burning tranche one hours with its ever reducing active tranche 1 fleet and for the next five years ( 2020-2025) take half the 100,000 flying hours on the tranche 1 fleet, that would give the tranche 2/3 fleet 150,000 airframe hours burnt up until the retirement of the tranche ones.
So we will then burn 200,000 hours in 2025-2035 for a total of 350,000 airframe hours..
After disposal of the tranche 1s the RAF will have 56 single seat tranche 2 and 40 single seat tranche 3 for 96 front line typhoons or 590,000 airframe flying hours.
Lets skip to 2040 and the most optimistic timeframe for the RAF to have it’s first front line tempest squadron, it will have burnt 450,000 airframe hours
So by 2040 the RAF will have about 140,000 airframe hours left in the typhoon fleet..or about five years worth of hours…
considering it takes the RAF about 1.5 to 2 years to stand up each new fast jest squadron the last typhoon squadron will not be stood down until 2050
And in
2040 5 typhoon squadrons burning 16,500 hours
2041 5 typhoon squadrons burning 16,500 hours
2042 4 typhoon squadrons burning 13,000 hours
2043 4 typhoon squadrons burning 13:000 hours
2044 3 typhoon squadrons burning 10,000 hours
20045 2 typhoons squadrons burning 6500 hours
2046 2 typhoon squadrons burning 6500 hours
2047 1 typhoon squadrons Burning 3300 hours
2048 1 typhoon squadron burning 3300 hours
For around 90,000 typhoon hours burnt durning the time tempest gradually takes over and typhoon is phased out…
This means if you look at average usage of 20,000 typhoon flight hours a year ( and sometimes it goes up to 22500 for a 10% increase) the typhoon fleet will be retired with around 50,000 airframe hours left..so if tempest gets delayed by even 2.5 years the RAF will run out of airframe hours on its typhoon fleet.
Personally if I was Russia I would spend my entire time throwing ever increasing T-95 incursions at the Uk, if they eat up the typhoon flying times by an extra 3000-4000hours a year to 23,000- 24,000 for the next 15 years they could collapse the number of typhoon airframe hours to the point the RAF cannot keep its typhoon squadrons running in 2040.
Which is a great idea but the T-95 is held together with Gaffertape-ski and they are maxing what they can get out of them ATM and playing a very dangerous edge game between losses and pretending to have a capability.
Personally I wouldn’t bother with military I’d just bodge modify some civilian airlines to carry some dummy missiles and paint it in RuAF colours. Pollen is they can’t do that either as they have no spares.
Let’s be honest the Russians don’t really give two hoots about safety of their aircrews…but even without that HMG had better hope delivery of tempest is right on the button, if it is delayed they will need to make an emergency purchase of F35s. Running your primary air defence fleet down to 50,000 hours airframe hour time is not a clever thing to do.
Luckily. Experts are managing the Typhoon fleet. And are not using gestimating maths.
Yes well the hours are the hours and if they run out of them no amount of expert knowledge will make a blind bit of difference..the RAF burn 20,000 to 22500 airframe hours a year, for its operational needs, each typhoon has 6000 hours of life…those two numbers define when the fleet runs out of airframe hours and no expert can change that..unless they simply don’t fly as much with all the impact that will have on readiness, capability and deterrent…all the experts in the world could not prevent the RNs frigate fleet from a catastrophic failure in numbers when HMG decided not to bother ordering any frigates and all the experts in the world will not be able to maintain the typhoon fleet if it runs out of hours because tempest is delayed. If you choose to not mitigate the risk then you accept the consequences of that risk being realised..just as the RN now has to do with its frigate fleet.
We kept Tornado flying for 40 odd years, with 20 odd years of constant deployed operations. Its why we have a sustainment fleet, to spread the hours around the fleet. And Typhoon is designed to be worked very hard. Airframe fatigue is not an issue like it was on earlier 4th gen fast jets. Tornados had G restrictions from the early 90s, and still lasted 40 years. The fly by wire doesn’t allow the jet to be over stressed even when pulling sustained 9G. The mean time between failure is very impressive on Typhoon. And jets on operations can even go into positive hours, because they spend alot of time flying in straight lines, with very little G being put through the airframe. So yes, I trust the RAF/BAE Systems to get Typhoon to whatever its final planned out of service date will be in good shape.
Sorry Robert but you have a couple of things that are incorrect,
The first is the airframe life of the typhoon vs the tornado, the tornado had higher 33% longer airframe life over the typhoon not a shorter one. The tornado had a 8000 hour life. The typhoon is 6000, and it struggled like help to get to that, at one point they had dropped the airframe life to 1500, they did undertake a project to see if they could increase the life about 15 years ago they could not. The typhoon has a hell of a lot more performance and therefore airframe stress than the tornado so 6000 hours it was
The second is thinking the two fleets will in anyway have the same fleet management over a 40 year life. Tornado fleet was 335 strong, with the 8000 hour airframe this gave the RAF 2.84 million airframe hours of life across the tornado fleet for its 40 years of life. They were never going to burn 2.84 million hours of flying time, infact by 2011 and 28 years of life the tornado fleet had only burned 1 million of those almost 3 million miles..so each tornado had only burnt around 2500 hours out of 8000 in 28 years…compare that to the tranche 1 typhoons who had burnt an average of 2500 hours out of 6000 in only 12 years..
The typhoon fleet which was 160 strong gave the RAF only 960,000 airframe hours of life across the fleet..it’s likely the Typhoon will need to be in service till the end of 2040 for around 45 years of life…they can and likely will burn .96 of a million hours over 40+ years..as of 2019 the RAF was burning their hours at a rate of around 2500 per aircraft every 12 years…and that’s going up.
And this is the problem essentially the sustainment fleet for the typhoon is now none existent as they only have 96 single seat fights for 6 front line squadrons, 1 Falklands flight, one OCU and one test and evaluation flight…that’s just enough for the squadrons, it will not supply a sustainment fleet.
Let’s look at the typhoons in 2014
3 squadron (front line) 14
11 squadron ( front line) 14
6 squadron ( front line) 16
1 squadron ( frontline) 14
41 squadron (R) 6
29 squadron ( OCU) 17
Falklands flight 4
Deployed 85 aircraft in for FOUR front line squadrons
With a sustainment fleet of 25
For 110 aircraft…
So in 2014 the RAF had 110 typhoons with only 4 front line squadrons making up only 50% of its fast jet fleet and flying 18,000 hours a year.
In 2021 the RAF have 106ish typhoons in 6 front line squadrons making up 70% of its fast jet fleet flying around 23,000 hours a year…There is no meaningful sustainment fleet or way to manage the airframe hours.
It’s a nightmare situation that without significant mitigation will be far worse than the RNs disappearing frigate fleet…they literally don’t have enough airframe hours in the fleet..when I did my maths I was being very conservative. In reality it’s likely most of the typhoons are now over 50% airframe hours use and if they burn them like they did for the first 12 years of service they will have lost all the tranche 2s to airframe. Fatigue and be flogging the 40 tranche threes to death.
Another problem to add the the RAFs airframe hours is the early tranches of F35B suffered a significant issue around how they lightened the airframe and there is a very good chance the early F35Bs may not get beyond 1500 hours before retirement. They don’t know how many exactly that is in the RAF ( no one is telling ) but it’s probably the first 12.
Simply put the RAF don’t have enough airframes and airframe hours to manage the airframe hours needed for 8 front line fast jet squadrons, 2 OCUs and the Falklands until the mid 2040s unless they make a significant buy of airframes. It’s not really rocket science and all the numbers are spread across a number of FOIs and other articles. Infact for a safe effective management of 8 front line squadrons and 2 OCUs they need the 70+ F35B as well as about 30-40 more typhoons.
and the RAF is hammering the typhoons far harder than the Tornadoes.
The RAF purchased 355 tornadoes for its fleet and after 30 years that fleet had flown 1 million flying hours for a total of 2816 flying hours over 30 years.
By 2014 the tornado fleet of around 110 aircraft was only flying 14,000 hours a year. At the same time the 110 strong typhoon fleet was knocking up 18,000 hours.
Good evening. This is a very detailed and interesting analysis – especially considering that on the average day the RAF has only 30 combat ready Typhoons, none of which have the ECRS Mk2 radar the Spanish are getting until the end of the decade
They’re not getting mk2
They aren’t getting ECRS MK2. And RAF Typhoons aren’t just sat around waiting for the next battle of Britain. You repeat this line constantly David. And you couldn’t be further away from Typhoon availability figures or how the fleet is managed or how they operate.
The U.K. needs to get more F35B into service. Just now the problem is the nuclear and other items are eating up the budget. Most of the navy is being replaced. Lots of the helicopters of all forces are needing replaced.
The army needs new stuff.
That is what you get for taking investment holidays to balance the books short term.
Yep you either pay out the nose to mitigate all the risks that developed from the short term saving or you accept the consequences of the risk..like ending up with 6 knackered frigates only 5 of which are ASW frigates, which is where the RN will be in 2 years.
@Robert Blay
Britain’s last Typhoon order – of tranche 3 – was placed in 2009 and no new aircraft have been ordered since. The last jet produced at Warton for the RAF was delivered in 2019.
I would support a further domestic order for another Typhoon squadron of 24 as necessary to retain the skills to build and fly GCAP. The figure of only 30 combat ready Typhoons is widely quoted elsewhere. Our Typhoons won’t get the new radar until 2030 at the earliest.
What seems to be happening is that Typhoons are being retired from active service – to be replaced by F-35B at some, unspecified time in the future. Lack of spare parts perhaps@
@David Lloyd. We don’t need to buy more Typhoons to retain skills to build Tempest. We have those skills, and the technical experience of building 5th F35 will be of far more benefit to Tempest. Most T3 jets are less than 10 years old. So they will last for another 30 odd years. And F35B isn’t replacing Typhoon, we are just buying more F35’s. T1 Typhoons have king been planned foe retirement from 2025. With £2.35Billion being spent on upgrading the T2/3 fleet. And the upgrade isn’t just about ECRS MK2. Its defensive aids, weapon systems PIRATE, wide area display, Striker 2 DHMD, Increased computing power, Navigation, situational awareness, Litening 4 targeting pod, and a much longer list of enhancements. Our Typhoons will be the most capable of any Typhoon operater. That is were the money is being spent. The RAF will go for the best capability over numbers every day of the week. 24 new jets would be great. But the money simply isn’t available to do it all.