Final assembly of the Eurofighter Typhoon has ceased at BAE Systems’ Warton facility in Lancashire, as existing orders come to an end and no new domestic or export contracts have yet been secured, according to a statement issued by the Unite union on Monday.
BAE Systems has redeployed hundreds of workers from Warton to other company sites or RAF bases.
The move comes amid growing pressure from unions and industry figures for the UK government to commit to a fourth tranche of Typhoon jets, including the latest “T5” upgrade, to sustain jobs and industrial capability until the next-generation Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) enters production later this decade.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham criticised the government’s procurement stance, questioning its stated commitment to supporting UK defence industry jobs. “Workers at BAE and across the whole UK defence and manufacturing industry will be looking at the ending of the Typhoon final assembly production at Warton and asking how a government promising to turn defence spending into ‘British growth, British jobs, British skills, British innovation’ could let it happen,” she said.
The union warned that the transfer of skilled workers away from Warton risks eroding the UK’s industrial base just as the GCAP programme, developed jointly with Japan and Italy, is meant to ramp up. Graham said, “Instead of future planning and ensuring skilled workers are ready to produce the next generation of fighter jets, they still seem content to sit on their hands while those skills begin to wither and die.”
Unite is calling on the Ministry of Defence to place an order for updated Typhoons to replace aging RAF aircraft. “The MoD must now urgently announce its commitment to the Typhoon with an order for the latest, cutting-edge T5 Typhoons,” Graham said. “A failure to do this could destroy a generation of aerospace workers and would amount to an act of national self-harm.”
Rhys McCarthy, Unite’s national officer for aerospace, argued that the government’s reliance on potential export orders to fill the production gap is misplaced. “The government has suggested that export orders could fill the gap until GCAP but none have been forthcoming,” he said. “This is hardly surprising since the government doesn’t have enough faith in the plane to buy it itself yet expects foreign countries to.”
McCarthy warned that without an immediate order, disruption would ripple through the wider UK aerospace supply chain: “This is an act of self-sabotage that will wreak havoc with the aerospace workforce across Lancashire and a UK-wide supply chain that supports thousands of jobs.”
The Ministry of Defence has not yet issued a response to Unite’s statement. The Typhoon, developed in partnership with Germany, Italy, and Spain, remains in frontline service with the RAF and several allied air forces. The UK’s future fighter, GCAP, is expected to begin entering service from the mid-2030s.
Feels like a rerun of what we had with the shipyards, feast and famine instead of a steady stream of orders to maintain production capabilities and manufacturing skills…
You beat me to it. The military aircraft industry in UK is dead. I was a teen on Merseyside in the 50’s and sadly witnessed the rapid death of shipping.
I thought we were building Tempest….
The UK isn’t ordering any Typhoon jets but I believe Turkey will be putting in an order that should keep the production lines going for a while.
I would love to see some more Typhoons ordered for the UK but I wonder if this is just Unite trying to get some headlines.
Turkiye is as they are re-engineering the technology for use in their VERY popular new fighter that is selling like the proverbial.
We no longer build a ‘plane that attracts foreign sales and we can’t survive on home handful sales
It’s crazy isn’t it Turkey a country with one of the highest inflation numbers in the world a larger population than us a smaller GDP can order 40 f16 and wants to order 40 typhoons has already over 200 f16 and us one of the richest countrys in the world can’t order any t4 typhoons and has only recently decided to get rid of its T1 typhoons with the majority being T2 variants it’s embarrassing really
The only thing crazy is where UK Governments spend taxpayer money.
On old people generally.. just saying as an old person.
AS another older person I agree but the basic problem is we are no longer wealthy unless you regard debt in some way as wealth. We appear so as we are like a person now living day to day on his credit card, paying the interest using another card. Like the current Government, said person has not got a clue how finance works.
No its true- was reported in the FT and met a lot of incredulity and negative comments.
Exactly Spock. There is a need for both the aircraft (operational & warfighting reserve) & the maintaining of skills, employment and potential further exports.
Not ordering another 20 T5 is ridiculous , especially as Germany is also ordering 20 and is funding SEAD aspects.
F35 is still a decade away from fielding anything other than PW4, Amraam and ASRAAM and LM will drag their feet further to favour US weapons.
Expect the cost of Tempest to increase substantially & delivery delays as we will have to re-learn the skills required once manufacturing begins. Usual story 🙁
It’s just final assembly. We are still making all the other parts/EJ200s for Typhoons on order for the other partner nations.
Do the people in MoD main building have a brain cell between them or is it taken up by the latest group thinking buzzword presentation? With less than 100 Typhoons we’ve very little redundancy. Are they not aware of the threats facing us or are their heads in the sand?
firmly in the sand I’m afraid, this development has been cautioned and warned about and no-one seems to be listening or to care, the concept of one or more of our precious typhoons being shot down in a military conflict seems alien to them and there is no need for redundancy, attritional reserve or anything approaching an adequate force level.
Madness and stupidity is the order of the day, washed down in buzz words, power point presentations and management speech.
People in MoD main building ??? You mean 2 tier Kier …. All words no action. Main building do what the politicians tell them .
Enter stage left riding white charger…..who art thou shining Knight…I am Sir Keir and this is my sturdy steed, Reeves. We have come to rescue you!
More like enter the damsel in distress and the court jester …..
I just have to believe there is a Typhoon order in the offing, either from Turkey or the UK. A shutdown of assembly at Warton just doesn’t fit with the govt high skilled, industrial strategy, defence sector job story line. It would upset pretty much everybody especially the unions.
It would certainly make a mockery of the PMs warnings about being on a war footing. Will sound cynically like a ruse, trying to prepare us for limited spending and higher taxes elsewhere rather than any real military investment. Difficult not to be cynical about Govt’s after the ones we have had for decades and pr and propaganda taking precedence over actual change.
I think a Typhoon can carry 6 Storm Shadow. If we were to develop an extended range version and buy 2 or 3 more Typhoon squadrons you add a significant conventional deterrent at a more relevant level of escalation than a dozen F-35A with a B61 you don’t actually control.
I’m not so sure..
Apparently GCAP will be built in a completely different way, with 3d printing of sub assemblies etc.
Perhaps we need to clear the Thypoon assembly building to completely reconfigure it fir Tempest.
Bare in mind, they are promising ‘wind under the wheels’ inside 10 years, so that will mean a ramp up of tne new line and new/retrained staff for Tempest very soon.
I suspect the Tempest production announcement coming this year will make things clear.
In thee anytime, there should be plenty of Tranche 2 and 3 Typhoon upgrade work to keep Warton busy.
That’s a thought provoking perspective and I agree would be a valid explanation of what we see happening. I did read in one of the Lancashire papers that the BAE staff are not being laid off but moved to other plants. I have often thought that Tempest is more advanced in development than is commonly supposed. The BAE team ( and gals) are in the tradition of Canberra, Buccaneer, Lightening, TSR2, Harrier, EAP. They not apprentices, rather they are the best there are.
I’d love to ride Reeves!
You should be ashamed of yourself! Ms Reeves is a beautiful and talented married woman, whose patience must be sorely tried working for Gruppen Fuhrer Starmer.
I blame the MRCA.
They built an airframe to replace certain one trick ponies, Typhoon pretty much finished the job, trouble is,
It can only be in one place at a time.
I think we will pay a heavy price for this decision and frankly it makes an utter mockery of the money invested in the new ESA radar which is being fitted to a hand full of Typhoons at an absurd cost per unit.
I would very strongly urge anyone and everyone to contact their MP and raise Merry Hell about this ! It’s urgent, it’s industry, it withers and dies very quickly without orders so if there is any uplift coming in the Autumn DIP then bring it forwards now.
Nearly 3.5 years of Putin waging war in Ukraine and threatening us directly and not one new major item outside the existing agreed equipment plan has been ordered (the 27 F35s were in the plan).
Order 36 new Typhoons and do it now, if for no other reason than GCAP will undoubtedly be delayed as everything is, so how long can the existing Typhoons last ?
But do not pay one penny more than you have to, BAe needs their production line fed to preserve it for the future, so cut a very good deal 🤔
Completely agree
But if you are going to somehow find the money for 36 additional fighters now, I will guarantee the RAF would lobby hard for F35A.
Thypoon is an excellent platform, without doubt, but it’s rapidly becoming yesterday’s fighter, the RAF arn’t interested in acquiring more.
Exactly.
We’ve retired the tranche 1 typhoons, have ordered a few more F35Bs (15) and a single squadron of F35As to undertake a mission that is not needed- I think a new tranche of typhoons is very much required- at least another 36 aircraft- the RAF frontline fast jet force is frankly laughably small now. We are not deterring anyone by deploying penny packet numbers of jets to air policing missions.
HMG need to get serious- more aircraft are needed- not just to maintain key workforce and skills but to add mass and firepower or as SDSR stipulates- lethality.
I see no downsides to an order for 36-48 more new typhoons with ECR2 and latest weapons fit. Typhoon after all is the only aircraft currently that can launch meteor, storm shadow, brimstone and any other British precision guided weaponry. These aircraft can bridge the gap between Tranche 1 retiring and Tempest coming along in the 2030s.
I’m afraid the government has 950,000 18 to 24 year olds doing nothing to finance alone, never mind the rest of the vast welfare state budget and increasingly militant MP’s that won’t let them cut the bill.
Defence isn’t a priority, yet….
Blimey, 950k! And they’re short of sailors, soldiers, pilots? Hope the government is thinking hard what they can do with all this potential and to put all these people to work or some use.
Wasn’t expecting any more Typhoon orders to be honest with this government .With all what’s going on in the world HMG still don’t get it . 🤔
I was beginning to get hopeful after SDSR that the UK’s military force and defence was actually going to increase- seems not, if we are happy to lose industrial capacity and our European neighbours likewise are not ordering more of this key aircraft. Putin must be laughing himself to sleep at night knowing Europe is weak and getting weaker.
Without US support our industrial military base will be utterly useless at resisting a concerted Russian attack against NATO- 3.5% defence to GDP ratio- we shall see, unless huge new orders for typhoon come along PDQ we are more than in a little bit of trouble- we will have lost the capability to build high performance combat aircraft.
The UK can easily, very easily provide a valid rationale for purchasing at least 36 more typhoons- Id go as far as saying 48-56 are actually a more realistic number to bridge the gap leading into Tempest.
We all know the RAF wants F35As but we simply cannot get them into the production lots in time (not until after 2033) and only the typhoon will deliver increased combat air power to the RAF within a reasonable timeframe.
The SDSR was all about increasing our industrial capacity. If we ordered more Typhoons tomorrow we wouldn’t get any before 2030. We can’t build them any quicker then we can get F35s. We also don’t have the manning to fly and maintain all these extra Typhoons. And Putin is not laughing at us. Russian forces if you haven’t noticed in Ukraine, are abysmal. We are still making all the vital parts of Typhoon. Radar EJ200s, Wings ect. The final assembly is the easy part.
Typhoon Final assembly may end in the UK. But those wings, forward fuselages, Canards, Radar, defensive aids, avionics, weapons, EJ200s ect will carry on for a good few years yet. That’s the important stuff. Final assembly is just putting all together.
Maybe the UK should give a few older ones to Ukraine and order new ones instead, wars could be a great sales promotion… IMO if Turkey is allowed back to the F35 program they will not oder Typhoons.
We should be bagging 20/30 if we are anywhere near serious in this “ahem” Defence uplift
The piggy bank is only so big
And the problem is there’s more taking out than putting in.
And as the government stands over people, demanding they put more in, for very little improvement it seems, many are just giving up, moving on or selling up.
China, Russia, Turkey…not places where the government prioritises pensions, in work benefits or much of a welfare state at all to be honest.
The irony is. If we ever need to do some serious fighting and GB suffers a load of casualties…there won’t be pensions, in work benefits or much of a welfare state left at all, to be frank.
Our current priorities, good, bad or indifferent make it difficult to invest in those things that guarantee those priorities in a risky world. It’s kind of defeating.
It’s all about to health related demographics that are essentially killing the west.
It’s “healthy” life expectancy vs actual life expectancy and we have a massive 20 year gap.. which is essentially burning a hole in government finances and because the government can do sod all about that all the various governments do is:
1) tinker around the edges of finances
2) try and import more workers to pay more tax.
But unless we face the actual issue there is nothing anyone can do.. our healthy life expectancy is 62-63 and has essentially been the hardly moved since 1980 but the period life expectancy for men in 1980 was around 70 ( the average age men died in 1980 ) but period life expectancy for men today is 82… essentially men worked and then died a few years later in the 1980.. now they will live with 18-20 years of ill health and retirement.. essentially a person between 70 and 80 costs the government something like 30k a year.. the average tax paying worker under 65 costs 7k a year..
We essentially have 3 choices
1) pay more tax and all be poor to keep supporting a sick old population that live I. Ill health longer and longer.. the healthcare system gets better and better at keeping people alive in ill health.. ( 20 years ago as an emergency nurse if you had a dense stroke I would put you to bed to die… now we can treat you and you live 20 years more… but it’s costs a fortune ).
2) we essentially go a bit Logan’s run and stop paying for interventional care for the last year of a persons life.. we drop life expectancy by a year or two but probably save 60k per person. Which would free up around 40 billion a year.. yep that’s a hard truth our last year or so is costing around 40 billion.. we throw a shit ton of resources into the margins of life and death.
3) we get a grip of ourselves stop pretending we are free to abuse our bodies eat, drink and breathe poison and y to yet still live into our 80s through vast expense we put on our children.. essentially ban all the crap we know causes our healthy life span to only be 63.. eat vegetables and meat and not the products of the chemical industry.. use the legs that god designed us with etc..if we simply said sorry no if you want to live to 80 eat vegetables and steak.. not a Big Mac and chips.. we could push our healthy life expectancy up into the mid 70s and save a fortune..
But we will not do any of those.. we will eat shit not exersice ..get long term conditions in our 60s and spend all our societies resources on keeping us alive just a bit longer… because we paid out national insurance don’t you know.
So we’re going to ‘ triple lethality ‘ by not ordering anything .
It wasn’t this Govt but a former Labour Govt that screwed over nuclear boats, the Cons screwed over skimmer building; will our Lords and nasties never learn that skills need maintaining?
It’s industrial sabotage through negligence and ignorance.
To announce an order of F35A and not commit to buying more much needed Typhoons is madness.
Defence industrial policy, my a**e.
The RAF don’t want more Typhoons. They want to upgrade the ones we have. But if any new money was available for more fighters, they would want more F35s. And we are still making all the other critical Typhoon parts. Wings, canards, forward fuselage. Radar, avionics, EJ200s ect. Those are were the skills are, not final assembly. Italy has an final assembly plant for F35. But it isn’t a tier one partner.
We are supposed to be upgrading the 40 tranche 3 Typhoons with the new European Common Radar System (ECRS), plus a lot of cockpit upgrades, surely Warton will be kept busy on this for a while?
This upgrade is costing something like £40m per aircraft, which is a colossal cost by any standard. Over the nest 8 years, we have to buy 10 F-35bs to complete the initial 48 order, then another 27 As and Bs, then these 40 ECRS upgrades. The whole lot is the equivalent of 57 new aircraft, basically 7 per year, which completely maxes out the RAF’s combat air budget.
Would still like to see a further 18-24 additional Typhoons ordered to boost the RAF’s dismally low fast jet numbers. These could usefully be deployed as permanent forward flights in the Baltic, Germany and Cyprus, rather than weakening the thin UK squadrons by removing aircraft for these forward deployments.
Fact is that we can’t afford more fast jets this year or next; the £5bn additional money is already booked for improving the service offering – 4.5% pay increase, a lot going into improving service aaccommodation and weapons stockpiles, plus a lot going into new UAVs, UUVs and suchlike unmanned systems. But assuming the increase to 3.5% is goi g to start ramping up from 2027, an extra 18-24 Typhoons should be possible. It is certainly necessary, as we have barely 150 fat jets right now – about half the number France and Germany can field.
Have to hope the Turkiye order comes through, it’s for 20 of our retired Typhoon F2s and 20 new FGR4, that would keep Warton busy.
uld be a
The RAF would certainly like more F-35s, particularly the A version for interdiction and SEAD, where it currently has nothing in the shop.
But they would be equally happy to have fa urther batch of modern Typhoons. If that is necessary to keep Warton busy, then that has to be the priority, as we risk losing our fast jet manufacturing capability of we take a 10-year holiday until Tempest manufacture commences.