Eurofighter Pitches Türkiye a Second Batch of 24 Typhoons
The Eurofighter consortium is pitching Türkiye a second batch of 24 new-build Typhoons on top of the 20 jets Ankara has already placed under contract — a sales target disclosed on a briefing slide at the International Fighter Conference in Munich this week, not a confirmed order.
Eurofighter’s Chief Engineering and Operations Officer, Cristiano Montrucchio, presented the figure at the Defense IQ-organised International Fighter Conference on November 4, listing Türkiye’s “second batch” of 24 alongside other potential sales the consortium is chasing: a second 54-jet batch for Saudi Arabia, 36 for Austria and roughly 150 more aircraft spread across other prospects, for a total pipeline north of 200 potential orders. The slide put the programme’s lifetime totals at 769 Typhoons ordered and 619 delivered across ten customers as of September 30.
Crucially, the 24 jets are a separate proposition from the used Typhoons Türkiye is already negotiating to acquire from Qatar and Oman. Aviation Week’s Tony Osborne, who covered the Munich briefing, said directly of the slide figure: “this is not the Omani/Qatari aircraft I am told.” Janes’ Gareth Jennings noted that the last official Turkish government statement on the subject referred only to the Qatari jets, and that how the wider 24-aircraft figure would split between Qatari and Omani airframes — if it materialises at all — remains unconfirmed by any Turkish or consortium source.
What Türkiye Has Actually Signed For
The confirmed deal remains the one Türkiye and the United Kingdom signed on October 27, 2025: 20 new-build Tranche 4 Typhoons worth roughly £8 billion (about $10.7 billion), with deliveries split six aircraft in 2030, eight in 2031 and six in 2032. London and Ankara followed that with a £2.5 billion training and support contract signed on March 25, 2026, by Defence Minister Yaşar Güler and then-UK Defence Secretary John Healey, covering pilot and maintainer training ahead of first delivery. BAE Systems has since begun front-fuselage assembly on Türkiye’s first jet at its UK facility.
Separately, Türkiye’s National Defence Ministry confirmed as recently as October 22 that talks with Qatar over roughly a dozen used Tranche 3 jets remain active, with a parallel track toward a similar number from Oman — part of what has become a three-stage Eurofighter acquisition running from Qatar to Warton, built on the standing defence partnership Doha and Ankara have developed since 2017. Some Turkish trade press has reported that Qatar could eventually transfer its entire 24-jet Typhoon fleet rather than a partial batch, though that claim has not been corroborated by a second source. None of this touches the new-build second batch the consortium raised in Munich.
Why a Second Batch Would Matter
If the 24-jet figure ever becomes a firm order, it would push Türkiye’s total planned Typhoon fleet toward roughly 44 aircraft on top of the secondhand jets under negotiation — a substantial Western fighter force bridging the gap while KAAN, the indigenous fifth-generation fighter under development at Turkish Aerospace, works through flight testing toward the Turkish Air Force’s own target of 2028 for first deliveries. Ankara’s post-2019 fighter strategy has deliberately spread risk across multiple tracks, as its 2035 fleet plan lays out: Eurofighter purchases from the UK and, potentially, Gulf partners; a slower-moving conversation with Washington over F-16 and F-35 access that remains tangled in CAATSA sanctions history; and the KAAN programme itself, which Turkish Aerospace has said it eventually wants to scale into the 250-300 aircraft range domestically, on top of export orders already running past 68 jets signed.
A larger Eurofighter order also matters to the consortium’s own order book. BAE Systems, Airbus Defence and Space and Leonardo have been explicit that sustaining Typhoon production into the 2030s depends on finding buyers beyond the original core customers, and Türkiye — a NATO member with an air force that needs modernisation now, not after KAAN scales up — is one of the few prospects that can plausibly absorb orders at this size. For the consortium, pairing a confirmed 20-jet order with a credible pipeline of 24 more is also a marketing tool aimed at other prospective buyers watching how quickly Ankara’s commitment turns into metal.
Caveats
Every figure beyond the signed 20-jet UK contract and the £2.5 billion support package should be read as industry projection rather than Turkish policy. The Munich slide reflects what Eurofighter’s own sales team is pursuing, not a stated requirement from Ankara’s Ministry of National Defence or the Presidency of Defence Industries, and no timeline, price or financing structure has been attached to the proposed second batch. Whether it ever becomes a contract will likely turn on how the Qatari and Omani used-jet negotiations resolve, and on how fast the first 20 new-build aircraft move through BAE’s production line at Warton — where front-fuselage assembly for Türkiye’s first jet only began in late October.
