The Eurofighter, or Typhoon, is a twin-engine combat aircraft which has been designed “by committee”. Its planning stems back to 1979, but it first went onto the drawing board in Germany in 1986. The company Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH was formed in that year, and designers from different European aerospace companies joined to design the plane.
Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Italy were involved in the plane’s design, and they are all involved in manufacturing specific parts, though each of the four component companies can assemble an entire fighter. The British company in the consortium is BAE Systems. Based in Farnborough, Hampshire, BAE emerged after a merger of British Aerospace (BAe) and Marconi Electronic Systems in 1999. BAE is the fourth largest defense contractor in the world.
The most lucrative order for Eurofighters from BAE Systems came from the Saudis, which was signed on August 18, 2006. The deal to manufacture and sell 72 Eurofighter jets to the Saudis stems back to the Al Yamamah (”the dove”) contract first negotiated under the aegis of Margaret Thatcher two decades ago. The Al Yamamah contracts have been part of the biggest defense sales deal ever made, with weaponry sold to Saudi Arabia and paid for with 600,000 barrels of oil per day. The August contract would have added an extra £10,000,000,000 ($19.75 billion) to the Al Yamamah deals.
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