The £4.3 billion that makes up the bulk of the Typhoon funding in the Defence Investment Plan covers routine maintenance and previously agreed radar upgrades rather than new capability, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed, with the separate £1.1 billion allocation funding the extensive upgrade work still to come.
The clarification came in a written answer from Defence Minister Luke Pollard to Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, who asked for a breakdown of the £4.3 billion that remains once the £1.1 billion earmarked for upgrading the fleet is set aside from the plan’s overall Typhoon spend.
“The £4.3 billion funds UK Typhoon routine maintenance and previously agreed radar upgrades. This will assure the platform’s capability for the rest of the parliament and the foundation for the extensive upgrade work to come,” Pollard said, as quoted in the answer.
The response largely completes a picture that has been assembled through successive parliamentary questions. As previously reported by the UK Defence Journal, the MoD confirmed earlier this month, in answer to Fylde MP Andrew Snowden, that the plan’s £5.4 billion Typhoon line comprises the planned spend to maintain and upgrade the UK’s 107 aircraft, covering radar, communications and software upgrades, new defensive aids systems and improvements to weapons systems such as the upgraded helmet-mounted sight.
The latest answer resolves how that total divides, with roughly four fifths sustaining the fleet and honouring commitments already made, and the £1.1 billion representing the new money behind the upgrade programme intended to keep Typhoon credible well into the 2040s.
The previously agreed radar work funded within the £4.3 billion refers to the European Common Radar System Mk2, the electronically scanned array developed by Leonardo at Edinburgh and contracted before the Defence Investment Plan, which will give upgraded Typhoons a transformed sensing and electronic warfare capability and sits at the heart of the fleet’s planned evolution.
The £1.1 billion, described in the plan as upgrading and sustaining the Typhoon combat force well into the 2040s, funds the wider long-term evolution of the aircraft on top of that foundation, and Leonardo, which supplies the sensors for the upgrade, has pointed to the allocation as backing for the programme.
Expensive stuff considering we are only upgrading 40 airframes with the AESA radar.
Is that still the case ?
As far as I know
The whole fleet require the new radar.
I grew, all tranche 2 and 3 airframes, we should also do a Spanish style upgrade on the tranche 1 still in storage. Even to just have them as hangar queens.
Two “loud things” flying over Surrey at the moment….assume for Faenborough. Mate says were F35s.
They are on QRA and flying Up’t North to check a large warm object spotted near Manchester, they are now safely on the way home having identified it as just the 7th “Larger hot air filled Ego Bird” seen in U.K Airspace in the last decade.
This one has been risk assessed as non threatening to anyone North of Watford Gap, but career lethal to approximately 30 other “Smaller ego Birds” sometime next week in Central London.
RSPB says thats usual behaviour as all previous sightings result in a cull of the weaker members of the species.
Long term its lifetime is limited to about 15 months as the smaller members of the species tend to devour the older larger one by biting it in the back.
Aircraft maintenance… So the UK Gov paid Airbus, Leonardo and (of course) BAE to make the damn things, and MOD are giving them a further £4.1b, to upgrade and maintain them.
Maybe the MOD should ask BAE to fly them as well.
The new statement does confirm that both tranche 2 and 3 fighters will get the new radar. Thank goodness. The MOD have seen sense at last.
I’m not sure that it does.
Another gem! A very exciting press release followed by nothing as usual. Silly me, I thought we were going to do something interesting.
If this means that all the Typhoons get upgraded that’s great, but if it’s still only 40 it’s lousy value for money. How many new Typhoons for £4.3 Billion ?