Eurofighter GmbH has finally been empowered to write real subcontracts with penalty clauses for Typhoon production with the four partner airframe companies (Alenia, BAE Systems, EADS-Germany and EADS-Spain) that are also its shareholders. “It’s a revolution! We’re becoming a normal type of business now,” Aloysius Rauen, the CEO of Eurofighter, told Aviation International News here yesterday. A new Future Capabilities Program (FCP) (Phase 1) worth O1.2 billion that was recently agreed with the four nations should benefit from the new relationship.
The complicated and bureaucratic nature of the Eurofighter program has often been criticized, including an unusually frank public scolding of the industrial partners by the British defense procurement minister last November. But the NETMA procurement system set up by the four European nations is equally to blame, although Rauen won’t say so in public.
