Eurofighter being sold to nations (outside) europe?

maybe a strange question to some, but ive always be told if you wanna know something ask

ok say if australia/america/canada and said "oi, we wanna buy the eurofighter (typhoon)!"

could they easy do that? - i know saudi arabia wants to by the EUROFIGHTER, i just find it a little strange, how a ^EURO-fighter^ can be sold to a nation OUTSIDE of europe!!

what would the saudi's do?, call it something else or still call it the EURO-fighter?

but yeah just basicly my question is, how easy is it for nations (outside of europe) to buy the eurofighter (typhoon)?










[edit on 25-4-2006 by st3ve_o]

To pre-empt Waynos, Eurofighter is the consortium that builds the aircraft (from a number of companies), Typhoon is the actual airframe itself. Waynos has mentioned this a couple of times (as I was one of the guilty parties who have since amended their ways...), so credit goes to him.

Eurofighter Typhoon

As for release to other countries, I can't see any real problem with this. As well as Saudi Arabia, Singapore also evaluated the platform, but selected the F-15E (to be known locally as the F-15SG due to mods to the avionics and countermeasure systems). From an Australian point of view, we can integrate our AMRAAM and ASRAAM onto it, for air to ground I'm not too sure, but would expect that we could able to integrate our JDAM and LGBs onto it (though Brimstone sounds quite good). We have also recently selected JASSM as our stand-off weapon, and the website says that a stand-off weapon can be integrated. We also have the Penguin missile for maritime strike, which the website indicates can also be employed by the Typhoon. So, integration shouldn't be an issue, and if Saudi and Singapore can buy it then I'm sure Australia would be on the list of potential customers as well. Though JSF is still shaping as the likely platform to replace our Hornets and F-111s. Guess we'll wait and see what happens there!

I'm sure that the Saudi's will call theirs the Typhoon, like Eurofighter itself and the RAF both do. The spanish air force calls it the Eurofighter C.16, with the two seater being the CE.16. I'm not sure what Germany calls it but bearing in mind what the original Typhoon did to their tanks in WW2 I'd be surprised if they also use the name. They could translate it to Taifun maybe, although their is already an 'RDE Taifun' UCAV in Germany.

I guess this is another excuse to wheel out this fascinating photograph (not to be taken too seriously)

Reading their air forces official sites, it seems the Italians usually use the name Eurofighter, and sometimes call it the F-2000 Typhoon, while the Germans use the name Eurofighter seemingly exclusively.

Btw, the Germans, too had a Taifun during ww2... The nice little Bf-108 !

I think I read the Eurofighter consortium precisely dropped the "Eurofighter" name in favor of Typhoon for the export market, so that it doesn't sound too Europe-centered. Not to mention that the Brits are usually less attached to the notion of Europe.

The name Typhoon was adopted for marketing purposes, even though there was never even the slimmest of possibilities that the RAF wouldn't also use the name. Its not so much as case of them dropping the Eurofighter name though, that was always the name of the consortium that was put together to build it, it just sort of got adopted for the plane itself in the absence of anything else, it was actually called the Eurofighter EFA (think of it as working in the same way as 'Lockheed JSF' for example) for a while, then the EF-2000, but everyone just sort of used the name Eurofighter as shorthand until the name Typhoon was settled upon. Some in the UK had been proposing Spitfire II, but that far far too un PC and some wags suggested Spitwulf 190 might be more appropriate

[edit on 26-4-2006 by waynos]

Though the Eurofighter website isnt clear about it, I think the hierarchy is still as follows: Eurofighter (company) EF 2000 (model name) Typhoon (trivial and export name). The german Luftwaffe uses Eurofighter and EF 2000, but never "Typhoon".

If I was nitpicker (which I am, of course ) then I would argue that 'Typhoon' is the type name (and not trivial in any way) while EF-2000 is the type designation and that customers just choose which name they want to use anyway, such as Spain calling it the C.16.

[edit on 26-4-2006 by waynos]