The Eurofighter Typhoon fleet has surpassed one million flying hours.
The achievement was confirmed by Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH after data was compiled by the programme’s International Weapon System Support Centre (IWSSC). Alongside the aircraft milestone, the EJ200 engine has now exceeded two million flying hours, with each Typhoon powered by two engines.
The programme currently includes 769 aircraft ordered by ten air forces, with Eurofighter stating that further core-nation and export contracts are expected in the future.
Jorge Tamarit-Degenhardt, Chief Executive Officer of Eurofighter, said the milestone reflected decades of sustained multinational effort. “One million flying hours is a truly historic milestone that reflects three decades of teamwork, innovation, and commitment from thousands of people across Europe,” he said.
“It underscores the Typhoon’s enduring performance, adaptability, and vital role in today’s complex global security landscape.” He added that the achievement demonstrated the confidence placed in the platform by partner nations and export customers. “The million flying hours achievement illustrates the deep trust placed in our programme and jet by our partner nations and export customers. It also reflects the outstanding professionalism of the Typhoon pilots, engineers, and technicians who operate and support it every single day.”
Tamarit-Degenhardt said the aircraft remained central to allied air defence.
“For those involved in the programme — past and present — this is a moment of pride and a reminder that Eurofighter is not only a symbol of European technological excellence, but also of long-term international collaboration.”
“The Eurofighter Typhoon is recognised globally as a cornerstone of NATO and allied air defence, fully interoperable and adaptable to a wide range of mission requirements.”
According to Eurofighter, around 80 percent of operational air missions flown by the programme’s four core nations are conducted using Typhoon aircraft, highlighting its role as the backbone of European fast jet operations. The aircraft continues to conduct daily missions across Europe and the Middle East, including air policing, joint patrols, combat operations and Quick Reaction Alert duties.
Air Vice Marshal Simon Ellard (ret.), General Manager of the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency (NETMA), described the milestone as a reflection of sustained operational reliability. “Reaching one million flying hours is a powerful testament to the Eurofighter’s performance and reliability,” he said.
“Behind each of these flying hours is a remarkable and dedicated group of people who ensure that the Eurofighter keeps us safe and remains the world’s most advanced multi-role combat aircraft.” Ellard said the milestone underscored the wider significance of the programme. “This historic milestone highlights the success of Europe’s largest defence collaboration programme and I congratulate everybody involved in this fantastic achievement.”
Engine manufacturer Eurojet Turbo GmbH also marked the milestone, with its EJ200 engine reaching two million flying hours across the fleet.
Ralf Breiling, Chief Executive Officer of Eurojet Turbo GmbH, said the parallel achievements reflected the maturity of the aircraft and propulsion system. “Reaching two million flying hours is a proud and exciting moment for the EJ200 engine and everyone behind it,” he said.
“Alongside the Typhoon aircraft surpassing one million flying hours, these milestones celebrate the hard work, passion, and technical excellence of our teams, the strength of our partnerships, and the trust our customers place in both the engine and the Typhoon aircraft.” He added that the milestone demonstrated long-term confidence in the platform. “It is a powerful endorsement of the engine’s reliability and performance, and we look forward to building on this success as the EJ200 continues to power the Typhoon for many years to come.”
The Eurofighter programme supports more than 100,000 jobs across approximately 400 companies throughout Europe, making it the continent’s largest defence industrial collaboration and a central pillar of Europe’s combat air capability.
With the tangerine toddler throwing his dummy out the pram and Saudi now looking at F35 I am very much hoping the UK buys more Typhoons.
While Fat Amy is clearly the best war machine for day one operations and SEAD and she has the ability to fly off the carriers or use very short runways, it is proving too difficult and expensive to role out further beyond the niche capabilities.
A force of 75 F35B is probably all that is required.
The new tranche 5 Typhoon with the Mk2 AESA radar armed with STRATUS RS missile can probably take out any air defence in the world. For an opponent having to face not only stealthy F35B armed with SPEAR 3 but also big and loud Typhoons carrying out jamming missions and armed with STRATUS RS will be a daunting task. The combination is probably better than what either platform can achieve on its own. Stealthy assassin and a big loud missile truck.
Meanwhile for countering Russia in the air and providing air defence for the UK, Typhoon is the superior machine. Keeping continuous production at Warton is also vital.
Maybe Starmer will bring back a bit of paper ?
“I have in my hand, an order/receipt for 500 J35’s, in exchange for The Isle of Man” 😁
“While Fat Amy is clearly the best war machine for day one operations and SEAD and she has the ability to fly off the carriers or use very short runways, it is proving too difficult and expensive to role out further beyond the niche capabilities.”
This is likely true ATM. However, the reason it is ‘too difficult’ is the way we approach things, in a cheeseparing manner, and how tiny the force actually is. In order for F35 to be effective the model has to be changed from ‘what is the lowest possible cost’ to ‘what resources are required to get the maximum out of the investment we have already made’….F35B has to be fixed so that CSG is a reality. Yes, 74 F35B is all that is required for CSG but then there are all the other various taskings that it is given.
I agree that ATM Typhoon is more than enough to deal with the Russian scrap heap challenge AF and that sovereign control of the whole caboodle is really important too. In extremis UK could just go and integrate a weapon it needed on Typhoon when it decided to.
I also agree that there is a strong national interest in keeping Warton busy and rolling on new skills and ideas until Tempest starts production.
They already cut the F35B fleet to 60, but not to fund more typhoons, no to buy F35A….
Where are the UK Typhoons in their life cycles?
About on average 2000 hours into their 5000 hours estimated shelf life… they burn about 25,000 hours a year across the fleet. So 250,000 hours a decade.. divided by the about 100 single seat typhoons that’s about 2500 hours per aircraft, which means the fleet will probably be averaging 4500.. which is not good news.. the RAF is running on hopes and dreams in regard to its typhoons.. it’s hope is that F35 will be able to take a big burden of flying hours and that tempest is at operational squadron level in the mid 2030s..
My bet is Tempest will be cancelled by 2030. I’ll be gaga by then so I’ll leave the younger ones amongst us to fret about it.
Well the latest estimates are over 50 billion plus just to develop it, looking at some sources on X.
Italy has stumped up 18.6 Billion Euro so far, the UK 12 Billion up to 2033.
The MIC will be delighted. The military, will be interesting to see how many the RAF get. My guess is a sub par number just like the alleged 12 SSN that Healey is now refusing to commit to.
As always, the MIC will always clean up at the expense of the forces.
5000 hours is shocking. Other sources say 6000 which gives some leeway.
The F15EX is rated on some reports at 20,000 hours, the older F15C/D extended to 10,000 hours.
Older block F16s are still being recycled to other users.
Can Typhoon really be that low, and why are US designs capable of much longer life spans?
I used 5000 hours because your never never going to run a fleet to the edge.. you need a war reserve of hours on your airframes I used 1000 hours.. remember 20-25 thousand hours a year in peacetime could turn to 20 thousand hours in a month in a peer war, so so you could burn 1000 hours equivalent on each airframe within 4 months of a war…
We always focus on peacetime or war of choice operational tempo but forget the level of sortie rates we may expect of our squadrons in an organic war with a peer ( a forced peer war to collapse).
Historically the RAF has binned its fleets with not much more that 50% flying hours.. the tornadoes were binned in the region of 3000 flying hours.. as with the tranche one typhoons.. but they are going to fly the typhoons for far longer and with a none existent sustainment fleet.
Tornado was in RAF service for nearly 40 odd years. And was flown very hard. They had more hours on them then the German and Italian jets combined. The Typhoon will be just fine.
Hi Robert I’ve got the flight hours of the tornado fleet as it was retired out… because they had such a sustainment fleet and very large numbers they were actually retired out with about 50% of their indicative flight hours left on the final fleet…
I mean, even just to make the Typhoon look more attractive for foreign sales, you’d think our powers that be would be loudly singing their praises and committing to keeping the production lines open.
We’ve gone all in on future-gen aircraft which leaves us with little short-term benefit and has tied us to the increasingly unreliable Americans. The amount European nations are increasing their reliance on MAGA USA is insane; presumably to keep Trump from leaving NATO, but a very real possibility this will leave us holding the bag when Trump withdraws anyway.
Probably a good time to review the life left in the UK typhoon FGR4s.. so this is all from the latest FOIs current for mid 2025 all flight hours…
The four tranche 1s in the Falklands:
They will have an average of 3014 flying hours
The 30 Tranche 1 FRG4s in storage have an average of 2142 flying hours.. ( but this average is reduced by a couple of hanger queens it seems the RAF just keep to look pretty.. ZJ940 with its 4 flying hours, ZJ943 with its 86 flying hours and ZJ922 with 918 flying hours).. it does show what a waste of flying hours binning the tranche 1s really was.
The meat and bones of the future FGR4 fleet
61 tranche 2 ( block8 to block 15) these guys have actually been more heavily used than the tranche 1s so they have an average of 2429 hours. ( again this average is reduced by some planes the RAF simply stored away for ever.. ZJ948 with 5 flying hours, Zk326 353 flying hours
40 tranche 3 ( block 20 -25) these guys are the least used at 1315 hours per airframe.. and they have an even spread. Lowest is 702 highest 1801)
Future fleet predictions:
So the 101 future FGR4s have so far used an average of 1988.45 hours per aircraft giving a total flight hours used across the tranche 2-3 fleet of 200837… so if the lifespan of an FGR4 is around the 5000-6000 mark…at 6000 that would give you a total fleet life of 606000..hours..this gives the remaining fleet hours at 405,163 before it’s all used up.. assuming you want to ensure you can fight a war let’s say you need 1000 fight hours left on each aircraft so you need a reserve of 101,000 fight hours in the fleet to actually fight a short war. That means the typhoon fleet will have 304,163 flight hours remaining for peacetime front line service.. the RAF uses about 25,000 flight hours of typhoon time a year.. so by 2035 it will have about 54,163 hours left.. or two years at present usage levels..
The RAF are living on hopes and dreams
Hope: they get a big transfusion of F35s and they can actually start taking the fight hour load off the typhoon fleet..
dream: they get their first operational tempest squadron around 2038 and can remove the typhoon fleet by the early 2040s…
But there is a simple truth.. we don’t have the required number of hours left on the typhoon fleet for anything to go wrong.. any of the following will derail the RAF:
1) a long war over a number of years that ups the flight hours of the fleet beyond the 20-25k mark
2) F35 simply not being able to sustain the flight hours needed due to slow delivery, delays, maintenance and availability issues etc
3) tempest being delayed by even a few years…
Hi Jonathan. Airframe like is measured in FI (Fatigue index) A new Typhoon starts with a FI of 100, and that number reduces as it gies through its life. The Airframe life of 6000hrs isn’t a hard stop. They could easily go 2/3000 over that figure with no issues. The advantage of Typhoon is it was designed to be flown hard. Pulling 9G over its full life without overstressing the airframe. The FI figures will be high. And availability is high. The RAF are not living on hopes and dreams. They have decades of experience of maintaining aircraft in service and managing very complex fleets within fleets of aircraft far less reliable than Typhoon and far older and for far longer. The output of the Typhoon fleet continues to be outstanding. 12sqn have just deployed to Qatar. Akrotiri has another 12 aircraft on continuous detachment. And 12 aircraft have just deployed to Nellis for Red Flag 26/01. Along with all the other commitments/detachments and QRA. The RAF Typhoon fleet will not be screwed come 2035 or past 2040. None of the Typhoon operators are talking about an airframe hours extension project. Because its not really an issue.
But they did set the expectation at 6000 flying hours as its nominal service life.. and they did have a look a long time back but never published anything about extending that nominal life.
Fascinating, those examples tucked away and barely used! I wonder why.
Literally factory fresh.. if you track them they literally got delivered then stored…
I don’t think people appreciate just how good Typhoon is…
1,000,000 flying hours…with the UK one of the largest users…20+ years of operations, including thousands of long range combat sorties
Yet we’ve only had 1 total loss of an airframe…and that was by choice. ZJ943 was landed on its belly in 2008 at China Lake after the pilot forgot to lower the gear…the airframe was easily repairable but the RAF decided to use it as a ground instructional airframe so didn’t repair (happening in 2008 didn’t help…).
It’s absolutely incredible really when you think about it…we’ve never had a combat aircraft come close…
In comparison we lost 72 Tornado out of 385 purchased in accidents, plus 7 combat losses in its 37 years of service….
The two child benefit cap is not popular according to polling, yet will cost £3.5b a year.
That would add a squadron of Typhoon plus weapons, infrastructure and support.
Or a massive build of housing, pay and pension increase for retention and recruitment
Or a continued production run of a leaner crewed T31 frigate
Or Typhon launchers and Tomahawk for the army
A THAAD battery is $2 B. Patriot batteries similar.
Have a look what defence could look like if we had a serious Govt.