BAE Systems Begins Building Türkiye’s First Eurofighter Typhoon
BAE Systems has started building the first Eurofighter Typhoon destined for the Turkish Air Force, the company announced Thursday, as a separate briefing to industry at a conference in Munich floated the possibility of a further 24 jets on top of the 20 already under contract.
Assembly of the front fuselage for Türkiye’s first aircraft is underway at BAE Systems’ Samlesbury site in Lancashire, northern England, the company said in a statement posted to its official channels. Turkish Air Force representatives recently visited the facility to see the work in person. The center fuselage is being built by Airbus Defence and Space in Germany, in keeping with the four-nation structure of the Eurofighter consortium, before the aircraft moves to BAE’s Warton site for final assembly.
“This is an exciting moment for the programme,” said Dave Ward, BAE Systems’ vice president for Türkiye, adding that the milestone demonstrates Europe’s commitment to the Turkish customer. Ward said the Typhoon “will become a key part of Türkiye’s frontline,” a role that would also deepen Türkiye’s contribution to NATO combat air power.
Twenty jets, three delivery batches
The work at Samlesbury covers the first of 20 new-build Tranche 4 Typhoons that Türkiye ordered from the United Kingdom under a three-stage acquisition plan formalized in a contract signed on October 27, 2025, and finalized in Ankara by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and then-British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The deal is valued at roughly £5.4 billion ($6.9 billion) for the aircraft themselves, with the UK government putting the full programme value — including training and in-service support — at up to £8 billion.
Deliveries are scheduled to run from 2030 through 2032: six aircraft in the first year, eight in 2031 and a final six in 2032, according to figures tied to the UK order. That timeline reflects the reality that Eurofighter production lines, after years of shrinking order books, need time to ramp back up, and it leaves the Turkish Air Force reliant on its current F-16 fleet and whatever interim Typhoons it can secure for several more years.
The purchase followed a memorandum of understanding signed by Defense Minister Yaşar Güler and then-UK Defence Secretary John Healey at IDEF in July 2025, and a follow-on technical and logistics support agreement the two signed in Ankara in March 2026. Turkish Air Force pilots have already begun flight training on the type in the UK, ahead of the aircraft themselves arriving.
A further 24 jets, but not yet an order
The new element in this week’s reporting is a Eurofighter consortium briefing slide shown at the International Fighter Conference in Munich and at a related Defense IQ session on November 4, which listed a potential second batch of 24 new-build Typhoons for Türkiye as a sales opportunity. Industry reporting on the slide, including by FlightGlobal, attributed the outlook to Eurofighter’s Cristiano Montrucchio.
It is important to be precise about what this is and is not. The 24-jet figure describes potential demand that the consortium is pursuing, not a signed contract, a letter of intent, or a confirmed negotiation with a disclosed price or delivery schedule. Analysts covering the programme were quick to separate it from Türkiye’s other Typhoon-related discussions. Janes defense correspondent Gareth Jennings noted that “the last official word from Turkey on this referred only to the Qatari jets,” while Aviation Week’s Tony Osborne said of the 24-jet figure, “this is not the Omani/Qatari aircraft I am told” — meaning the Munich slide appears to describe a separate, additional opportunity rather than a repackaging of the secondhand aircraft Türkiye is already pursuing.
Qatar, Oman and a 44-jet target
Alongside the new UK-built aircraft, Türkiye has spent more than a year negotiating for Eurofighter Typhoons already in service with Qatar and Oman — part of a deepening defense partnership with Doha that now spans training, basing and equipment transfers — a route that could put jets in Turkish hands years before the first Samlesbury-built aircraft is ready. Qatar is expected to supply 12 Tranche 3 Typhoons under that arrangement. The Turkish Ministry of National Defense said on October 22 that talks continue and that “Qatar is expected to prepare and send a draft training programme and sales contract to our country” — language that makes clear no sales contract has been signed yet. A parallel discussion covers a smaller number of lightly used Omani Typhoons, though Ankara has disclosed no confirmed terms for that transaction either.
In October 2025, Güler said Türkiye’s goal is a fleet of 44 Typhoons in total: the 20 new-build aircraft from Britain plus the Qatari and Omani jets. The 24 additional aircraft that surfaced on the Munich slide appear to sit outside that 44-jet figure, which would mean Türkiye is weighing an even larger Typhoon fleet than previously stated — if the opportunity converts into an order. The slide also did not separately list Bangladesh, Poland or Portugal, three countries that had previously been named as prospective Typhoon customers, and one unnamed European country has reportedly offered Türkiye aircraft from its own production allocation, which could allow earlier delivery than the Samlesbury line permits. None of this is confirmed.
Why Türkiye is buying a fourth-generation jet at all
The Typhoon purchase sits awkwardly, on paper, next to Türkiye’s two indigenous fighter programmes: the KAAN fifth-generation fighter under development at Turkish Aerospace, for which Türkiye has already signed for 68 jets, and the long-serving F-16 fleet, parts of which are being upgraded under the domestic ÖZGÜR avionics and radar programme. But KAAN’s first delivery to the Turkish Air Force is not expected before 2028, and Türkiye’s exclusion from the F-35 programme since 2019 — a consequence of its purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems — closed off the most obvious alternative for adding fourth-generation-plus capability in the near term.
The Typhoon, despite its age, offers combat-proven avionics, an active radar upgrade path and full NATO interoperability, filling the gap in the Turkish Air Force’s planned fleet mix out to 2035 until KAAN reaches meaningful numbers in service. For the Eurofighter consortium — Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain — a confirmed Turkish order for dozens of aircraft, on top of the 20 already contracted, would be a rare win for a production line that has struggled to attract large new customers as European air forces increasingly look toward fifth-generation designs.
For now, what is certain is narrower than the headlines suggest: metal is being cut in Lancashire for Türkiye’s first Typhoon, deliveries are not expected before 2030, and everything involving Qatar, Oman and the additional 24 aircraft remains a matter of ongoing talks and consortium sales pitches rather than signed contracts.
Sources: BAE Systems statement; Türkiye Today; Türkiye Today; Turkish Ministry of National Defense statement, October 22, 2026.
