A letter from the joint unions representing BAE Systems workers at Warton and Samlesbury has raised significant concerns over the future of the Typhoon aircraft production line in the UK.
Addressed to Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, Member of Parliament for Slough, the letter outlines the growing unease regarding the suspension of Typhoon final assembly at the Warton site and the absence of future orders for the aircraft.
“As it stands as I write this letter, there are currently no Typhoons being final assembled at Warton and no orders for future aircraft, essentially production has stopped for British-built Typhoon aircraft.” the letter begins, making clear the halt in production and the uncertainty surrounding the future of the UK-built Typhoon fleet. The letter also highlights concerns regarding the UK’s potential replacement of these aircraft with American-made F-35A jets.
BAE Systems told me:
“Typhoon manufacturing is currently underpinned by the orders from Qatar, Germany and Spain which will ensure continuity of production of major units beyond the late 2020s. Further orders are needed to extend production beyond the latter part of this decade.”
A key point raised in the letter is the economic and industrial impact of such a shift. The unions argue that the UK’s industrial stake in the F-35 program, which does not depend on the number of platforms the UK acquires, would not mitigate the loss of domestic Typhoon production.
“The UK industrial position on the programme is due to the sovereign Intellectual Property and direct investment that the UK brought as a Tier-1 partner so if the UK decides to acquire no more F-35s this will not impact the economic return to the UK from the wider programme,” the letter states. The unions warn that halting the Typhoon production could “end design, manufacture and assembly of fast jets in this country,” and harm the UK’s sovereign capabilities.
The unions argue that “a nation is only as strong as its industry”, a sentiment echoed by Defence Minister John Healey, which they wholeheartedly agree with. They highlight the strategic importance of the Typhoon programme, which is a cornerstone of the UK’s combat air industry. The unions advocate for a domestic order of 24 Typhoon jets, arguing that the UK is the only partner nation in the Eurofighter consortium not yet committed to purchasing new aircraft.
“A domestic order will not only fulfil a requirement for the RAF in these unstable times but will also ensure that vital skills required to build the next-gen aircraft, GCAP, are retained at Warton Unit,” the letter continues.
The unions argue that without a domestic order, the UK could risk losing the necessary expertise to build and maintain advanced aircraft, including the future Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP).
In addition to the domestic order, the letter outlines the broader economic significance of the Typhoon programme, noting that it generates £2bn annually for the UK economy and supports thousands of jobs across the supply chain. “The Eurofighter Typhoon programme delivers in the region of £2bn per annum to the UK economy, directly employs 6500 people with an additional 14,000 in the supply chain and delivers around £1.6bn – £2bn per annum of export revenue.”
The unions argue that securing a domestic order will not only benefit the UK’s workforce but also bolster confidence for other nations considering Typhoon purchases.
The unions also stress the importance of the Typhoon programme for national security, suggesting that the loss of this production capability would damage the UK’s standing in international defence partnerships. “We are the only partner nation in the Eurofighter consortium that hasn’t committed to buying new aircraft,” the letter states. “A domestic order will give other nations considering buying Typhoon off the UK (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Poland amongst others) the confidence to invest in the platform providing export revenue to the country and ensuring the longevity of our sites.”
The letter concludes with a call to action for the government to secure the future of the Typhoon programme in the UK. The unions request that the government take swift action to order new aircraft, which they argue will secure jobs, enhance military capabilities, and contribute to the country’s long-term defence strategy.
“If you would like any more information or support on this please don’t hesitate to contact us; we would also like to invite you to visit our sites in Lancashire to see our facility.”
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When did this concern about an F35A procurement rear its head (beyond the strange hypotheticals on online forums?)My understanding was that the MOD were looking at F35B first as a preference to Typhoon for growing combat air “mass”.
It’s a made up concern, the only way we are buying F35A is if the US withdraws from NATO and we have to take on the dual key B61 tactical nuclear role.
The US won’t withdraw from NATO if all countries pull their weight and stop expecting the “dumb yanks” to pay the lion’s share of the collective defence budget. Eight Nato members are not estimated to reach the target in 2024. They are Croatia (1.81%), Portugal (1.55%), Italy (1.49%) Canada (1.37%), Belgium (1.30%), Luxembourg (1.29%), Slovenia (1.29%) and Spain (1.28%). American taxpayers are more than tired of this treatment and Trump has heard them loud and clear.
It’s fair to say that Trump is right with this one, it’s like wanting to have a top teir gym membership but not wanting to pay for it. Every country in NATO should be required to put 2.5%GDP into the pot, otherwise their membership will be cancelled.
I assume the “logic” is that if we don’t produce Typhoons, we won’t be able to produce Tempest, so what would we replace the Typhoons with?
I think the f35A potential is because anyone taking a reasonable risk lens to the development and deployment of the 6th generation aircraft would likely conclude that at some point in the 2030s the Uk will come to the conclusion it’s going to run out of airframe hours in its tranche 2 typhoon fleet well before the 6th generation aircraft gets to the point it’s in most of the front line squadrons..at which point a F35A buy sort of becomes inevitable, or an expended F35b buy..but II could not see the RAF replacing typhoon squadrons with f35b squadrons….better to expand… Read more »
Just because we couldn’t build Typhoons doesn’t mean we couldn’t buy them rather than F-35.
I agree that it would be far better to buy some now. I’d rather we bought 18-24 T5 Typhoons, spending the T2 F-35 budget, which has been sitting waiting and may continue to sit waiting for several years yet as a means of pressuring Lockheed Martin on Meteor and Spear integration.
I get the logic in that, I’m just surprised that a BAE Systems union is talking about that, because with my dealings in Air Command and MOD it’s literally never been on the cards. The only thing I’ve heard is that they prefer F35B over Typhoon for any additional buys to increase combat air strength.
Typhoon T2’s have well over half their airframe life left…so the point around airframe hours doesn’t stack up.
The reason why F-35A ‘comes up’ is from a tiny number of defence commentators and retired RAF types who keep bringing it up….anyone who suggests that they have been paid to say it…and the perenially daft Justin Bronk…
Hopefully the SDR will end up more about buying stuff than not buying stuff
Keeping the skill base and a trickle production rate would be vital, which is preferable to nothing. The UK should retain the ability to build new jets to support attrition in times of combat; it’s as simple as that. Failure to protect the provision of attrition would be tantamount to ignoring the lessons from history.
I am not sure BAE could keep a production line going on for just a few few attrition stock orders (3-5 aircraft per year?).
It wouldn’t be nothing exactly as Tranche 3s and possibly Tranche 2s are due to be upgraded.
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi is chair of the defence sub committee. The point about showing confidence in your own products is well taken as is the point about industrial base. The thing is, would buying more Typhoons and fewer F-35Bs make defence ( and political) sense? You never know, maybe BAE is ready to start Tempest production 🙂
We should order 24 on spec as we did with the original Saudi Arabia order in anticipation of a government to government sale. There are plenty perspective sales customers and worst case scenario we just buy them to replace older T2 airframes instead of upgrading to the T5 standard. Given the massive potential benefits especially for securing more orders for the CAPTOR E mk2 AESA radar it seems like a no brainer. We should be able to finance this via the export bank with cooperation from BAE who I am sure would be more than willing. They could also be… Read more »
Arguably we can’t afford to sell any frigates or submarines right now without shooting ourselves in the foot.
If I have the choice of having a finite budget to purchase support and operate for just 24 Aircraft then I’d opt for the F35B.
But if HMG is willing to fund a speculative purchase of 24 export Typhoons to maintain the industry I’d do that as well.
But there would be strings attached, HMG funds it but on the proviso that BAe splits the profit 50/50 and repays the capital when they are sold. If there are additional export orders BAe can spread the repayment over a longer period.
In essence it would be a loan !
Based on the lack of care for the H&W contract / defence industrial strategy, and the relatively low financial risk of a £100m loan going belly up, I can’t see HMG funding 24 new Typhoons on a speculative basis at 30 times the potential financial risk (assuming ~£100m per airframe plus some add-ons). Not sure what the Germans etc are paying for their new Typhoons.
Someone else mentioned the follow on Hawk order that never happened – might be a more cost-effective solution, although would have its own drawbacks.
Sounds like a good plan . Its the kind of thing they could do with frigates as there is clearly a world shortage st the moment of modern frigates
There is nothing wrong with more Typhoons, not everything needs to be stealth. F-15/16 both still in production and getting orders.
We need to increase capabilities and get a big joint order to go through. Germany is working on EW variants, we’re working on the new AESA radar, time for Scholz to stop blocking increased saudi orders etc…
For the vast majority of missions for almost all countries on earth 4th Gen aircraft are superior to 5th Gen aircraft.
If the US and soon us follow up on an all 5th Gen+ fleet it will leave a massive gap in the market.
F35A? That’s never been proposed anywhere that I’ve seen.
RAF ?
Apparently the Turkish order for 48 Typhoons is a done deal, which if true will secure the production line at Warton until work on GCAP starts. That being said GCAP isn’t a direct Typhoon replacement, being more of a bomb truck and less of an interceptor/air superiority fighter so there will be a role for Typhoon when GCAP is in service. Regardless of Turkish + possible Saudi orders the UK needs more airframes to at minimum a T5 order to replace the T1s is needed. The discussion around Whitehall is not if we are going to be at 3% defence… Read more »
Err the GCAP will be an Air Superiority/Air Dominance Platform first and foremost,it will likely have the ability to be used in a Ground Attack Role,but that will be a secondary one.It will replace Typhoon in the A2A role.
Not it isn’t. GCAP is much, much larger than Typhoon.
Would you describe TSR-2 as being an air superiority fighter, because GCAP is going to be similar in size and scope?
Air warfare has changed.
Dogfighting in the age of stealth and air-to-air missiles is meaningless.
What use is it when you have METEOR?
Air battles are fought beyond visual range and so range and payload are what’s most important.
Air superiority fighters in the 6th Gen will be stealthy bomb trucks with long-range air-to-air missiles.
GCAP will be much larger thanTyphoon – everyone knows that,what the RAF and the JASDF want is long range, and a sizable Weapons Load ( preferably carried internally ) it will specialise in BVR,it doesn’t need to be an agile Dogfighter.The RAF wanted Typhoon to be larger than it ended up being for the same reasons but Germany forced a compromise.TSR2 was supposed to be a premier Strike Aircraft,ive not even mentioned it so your comparison is pointless.
I suspect there is a growing realisation that GCAP needs to be a stealthy F-15EX i.e. greater payload and range than a F-35.
Yes exactly focused on A2A not for Ground Attack.
Both.
I wouldn’t be so certain that the Turkish examples would find their final assembly being carried out at Warton.
I would be quite sure that the Germans will want Manching to carry out that particular role.
On Twitter Ben Wallace revealed the negotiations between the UK and Turkish governments on this. The deal would have been done under his watch but it was the German government that was blocking it.
Anyway the Eurofighter consortium has always worked on the basis that whatever country brings in an export deal gets to do the assembly for that order e.g UK doing the assembly on the existing Saudi Typhoons
UK is the lead nation on the Turkey sale…that means UK assembly. Same story for the Poland, Qatar and Saudi potential orders.
Manching will be busy enough with the 58 new Typhoon for the Luftwaffe, plus 15 EK conversions and adding ECRS Mk.1 to the German fleet.
Getafe in Spain has 45 new Typhoon to build, with Italy having 24 so far, and the potential of 24 for Egypt.
Indeed, I was under the impression that Turkey was our business.
I believe Leonardo/Italy is the lead for the Polish order.
It’s encouraging to see Euro fighter securing orders for gen 4.5 jets that offer real multirole capabilities.
The typhoon is possibly the best gen 4.5 aircraft for multirole.
All these order boost typhoon numbers upto 900 airframes so an impressive total. I do wish the RAF would order a new batch though so enabling scrapping of tranche 1 (or hopefully gifted to Ukraine).
3% is starting to look like far too little and if it’s not there for 2025/26 it will also be too late.
The second cold war has been going on for nearly three years now and if we don’t seriously step up defence spending then we will lose it and it will roll into the third world war, which we may also lose. Even if we win it will cost a lot of lives. We pretended to remember a few days ago but I don’t think most folk really understand what they were remembering.
This is insane.
With Russia not only resurgent but clearly hostile to the West, we and all of Europe need to be rearming as of yesterday.
The questions are always when Labour will increase spending to 2.5% of GDP but that’s not even enough. All NATO countries should increase to 3%, and we should build another 40-80 Typhoons over the next 5-10 years.
Couple of points here. When the RAF loss it’s tranche one fleet, it’s going to be very very difficult to maintain 7 deployable squadrons as well as the Falklands flight. Infact it’s very likely that IX Bomber would be moved away from being front line deployable and we would end up with only 6 deployable typhoon squadrons. 107 aircraft for 7 deployable squadrons, an OCU, test and evaluation squadron and 12 squadron and the Falklands flight will be to tight. So I would see the loss of 12 and IX Bomber. so just to maintain the status quo we really… Read more »
All sensible.
I doubt HMG are even remotely interested.
Or, they know something we don’t.
unfortunately I suspect it’s it’s the first, although I’m hanging onto the fact that Labour do need some flagships for their industrial strategy and keeping the typhoon line open would be a pretty good flag to wave around..killing two birds, looking “strong on defence” and building an industry up.
Reliant on the Turkish order that we’ve been working on for some time apparently.
When I read this article, your post, and then the ACMs speech getting the RAFs blows in for the upcoming SDSR I shake my head.
The different realities of each do not align.
I’ve been banging on about the reduced numbers needing replacement more regularly as the increased use caused by reduced numbers across our military means these platforms wear out faster. Don’t think the treasury has worked this out yet
Could they churn out some new Hawks (T3) to fill the missing 28 second batch that were supposed to be ordered over a decade ago?
I fear this will be a repeat of nuclear submarine building, where there was too big a gap between orders, skills were lost, & there was a heck of a job to get them back again.
Thought this F35A thing was long gone and dead at least as far as the UK was concerned. The advantages it offers in terms of bigger bomb bay and range are more than offset by the fact it won’t fly off our carriers. I would have thought that the range thing is more than countered by the fact that carrier born F35B can get much closer to target in any event. Don’t get me wrong I’m a great fan of Typhoon , it’s a great air defence fighter and will be even better with the new radar but is also… Read more »
Agree.
Just not enough of them.
There’s the likes of Germany, Italy buying new Typhoons Spain upgrade there’s and NATO members putting more into to Defence and UK government stops our main fighter aircraft production.Tempest will no doubt be years away and for the F35 we’ve barely got 30 aircraft as if no rush. 🙄
Would they be doing that if they had Tempest, AUKUS, and Dreadnaught to fund?
HMG has it’s priorities, and it is NEVER the conventional military.
Would it make any difference if we didn’t have AUKUS, Tempest, or Dreadnaught ?
They raise plenty of sensible arguments, but the UK has no intention of upping FJ numbers and I sadly don’t see the SDR changing that.
The good news is Turkey is on the brink of ordering 40, with Saudi, Qatar and Oman all exploring further orders and Poland is also interested.
BAE is the lead on all of the above so if even only a couple of extra orders materialise soon there should be plenty of work to bridge the gap until Tempest.
Correct me if I’m wrong and out of date but the Brits are masters of low level precision bombing while everyone else are carpet aficionados… eg. Baghdad, Damascus and Gaza… I would also opine that fast attack drone swarms are the future and what’s needed is AAA with a booster of A.I.
I would like to apologise in advance for using the word booster as it does conjure up images of those who cannot think for themselves.
If UK have to kill 30000 enemies and they combat in cities the cities will be destroyed.
The size of war is what matters.
My only hope for Labour is the Unions who have political clout , will force Kier Starmer to build more planes , more frigates and more vehicles than is already planned for
There are 2 good reasons to agree withe the unions. Retention of sovereign capability is vital. We have all seen the problems with armoured vehicles when we had to start again from scratch. Second, the RAF combat fleet is far too small. Integration of key UK weapons has been achieved on Typhoon. F35 is still limited to ASRAAM, AMRAAM and Paveway 4. Tech refresh 3 is still struggling. So there is little point on buying more F35B now. Simply comparing how frequently Typhoon is used in combat missions with how rarely F35 is, makes clear which aircraft we need more… Read more »
Nailed it right there, Typhoon is a proven platform and can carry / launch everything now, we have to wait until 2027/2028 to see the integration of non-US weapons on F-35B. FCAS will not start production until the 2030’s and even then I am sure it will take time to integrate weapons onto the platform. Get an order in place for more Typhoons to keep the line running and skills in place, not every battle needs 5th gen. Pushing for more F-35 beyond 80 or 90 could undermine FCAS if it hits any problems, I am a big supporter of… Read more »
Another example of a failing defence industrial base strategy. The MOD should simply maintained a low continuous rate production for the majority war fighting aircraft like typhoon.
A new batch of 24-36 aircraft are needed to see aircraft production through to GCAP/ Tempest
In this day and age the manufacturer perhaps needs to consider the options. Build some more aircraft in the knowledge that with all the wars going on around the world there is likely to be a market for a decent aircraft amoungst our allies and keep the staff for GCAP or don’t and take the risk of not having the appropriate staff.
The unions are really appealing to the labour Government who cannot seriously dredge up money for everyone who demands it.
Difficult to understand Does the Government through expert advice consider the American F35 superior? From the comments stated in the letter it would appear that the other members of Eurofighter still believe in the Typhoon.And finally are the Unions more interested in keeping jobs more than anything else!!