By Benjamin David Baker
The Typhoon is a good fighter but faces keen competition in Asian markets.
The Diplomat has recently been writing a series on the prospects of combat aircraft sales in the Pacific states. I’ve earlier covered French Dassault’s Rafale, U.S. Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet, and Sweden’s Saab’s Gripen. Robert Farley and myself have also written about the development and prospects for fifth-generation stealth aircraft in the region.
The Eurofighter Typhoon is another platform that is attempting to gain ground in Asia. Eurofighter is a consortium made up of Italian Alenia Aermacchi, European Airbus, and Britain’s BAE Systems, making it a truly European fighter. In service since 2003, the Tyhoon is the main multirole fighter of the U.K., Germany, Italy, Austria, and Spain, and has been exported to Oman and Saudi Arabia.
The aircraft has proven its combat worthiness, at least in a ground-attack capacity. In 2011, British Typhoons flew several ground attack sorties on Muammar Gaddafi’s forces during Operation Ellamy, reportedly destroying over 100 Libyan tanks and military vehicles. Italian Typhoons also participated in the operation, albeit in an aerial combat patrol capacity.
So far, the Typhoon has yet to find any buyers in South Asia or the Pacific region. This has not been for a lack of trying: Eurofighter has entered ultimately failed bids to sell the aircraft to India, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. In each of these cases, the Typhoon lost out to its competitors (India selected a limited order of Rafales, Japan went for the F-35, and Seoul and Singapore went for varieties of Boeing’s F-15).
However, this does not mean that Eurofighter has given up on the Asian market. Several Southeast Asian states are either planning to or are in the process of,updating their combat aircraft. Indonesia and Malaysia are both in the process of replacing their aging F-5s and MiG-29s respectively. Both states have stated an interest in the Typhoon. Interestingly, there are some rumors that Vietnam is also considering buying western military hardware, possibly including the Typhoon.
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