Newsdesk — Military Aviation

The financial, industrial and political aspects of the Eurofighter 2000 programme have been heavily criticised by the United Kingdom’s financial watchdog, the National Audit Office. Airbus has successfully demonstrated automatic landings using satellite navigation, with trials in Mauritius and Mmabatho, South Africa in mid August. Using Differential GPS, the 100m accuracy achieved in en route GPS navigation is further improved to around 2m for automatic landings by a ground station whose precise location is known: All the ground station comprises is a small circular antenna, two small electronic boxes and a VHF antenna.

A National Audit Office report has said the project’s management structure is “cumbersome and bureaucratic” with development work determined by political rather than financial requirements. It says “Eurofighter has been unable to impose its authority to ensure the resolution of problems on the programme since the lines of accountability have been blurred”. The report also warns of a number of challenges which remain to be overcome if the contracts for the future phases of the programme are to be placed in early 1996, as intended.

Four countries are involved in the Eurofighter 2000 programme — Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy — and they are now trying to resolve workshare issues as the production/investment phase approaches. Germany’s decision to substantially reduce the number of aircraft it intends ordering means its workshare needs to be changed but the National Audit Office has warned that a large reallocation of tasks will probably result in further delays and costs on a programme which is already three years behind schedule. The UK’s share of the programme is already costing about $A32bn, or $A4.7bn over budget. The National Audit Office says that future collaborative programmes should have one of the participating nations take the leading role and there have already been discussions about British Aerospace taking over that role on the Eurofighter 2000. Planned further cuts in the UK defence budget have meanwhile been described as a “grave mistake” by the House of Commons Defence Committee. Britain’s defence budget is planned to be slashed to $22.3bn (about $A48bn) in 1997-98, 10% lower than the 1991-92 figure. Defence production accounted for 4.2% of Britain’s GNP at the beginning of the decade but this will be reduced to just 2.8% in 1997-98 if current plans are implemented.