Eurofighter deal: 28 to go to Kuwait

Dubai - After several months of waiting, renewed Italian and international governmental and ministerial meetings, announcements and postponements, Kuwait’s Ministry of Defence and Finmeccanica, which is responsible for the sales campaign in Kuwait as part of the Eurofighter consortium, signed a contract of undeclared value for the provision of 28 Eurofighter Typhoon multi-role combat aircraft, which will be built in Italy, plus the associated logistical-operational support and training. The signing of the contract, which is set within the framework of the previously signed intergovernmental agreement, occurred in the presence of Defence Minister , Roberta Pinotti, and her Kuwaiti counterpart, Khaled Al Jarrah Al Sabah. As several authoritative sources have pointed out, this is a major success for the Italian industry, which for the first time has secured a large international order for the Eurofighter under Italian leadership, on behalf of the Eurofighter consortium.

Politics, diplomacy, the armed forces and industry have achieved an unprecedented result, in an arena dominated internationally by Franco-American competition and working with a particularly demanding partner. “It is the largest sales result ever achieved by Finmeccanica,” Finmeccanica C.E.O. and General Manager Mauro Moretti commented, “with very important implications not only for our company and our partners in the Eurofighter consortium, but also for the entire country, thanks to the benefits in terms of know-how and qualified employment for the entire security and defence sector.” The 28 Typhoon multi-role combat aircraft (of which 22 will be the single-seat version and six will be the two-seater version for the training of pilots on the new plane) will be provided in the most recent production variant known as Tranche 3, featuring Captor-E, a new radar system with electronic scanning antenna built by the EuroRadar European consortium. This consortium is headed up by Finmeccanica and includes Indra (Spain) and Airbus Defence and Space (Germany).

The choice of this latest system makes Kuwait the first country, besides the four countries that build the aircraft, to receive the advanced radar system which together with the other on-board systems, make the aircraft multi-role in the true sense of the word, capable of carrying out air-to-air and air-to-ground activities during a single mission. As the MediTelegraph reported on 15 September, 2015, the contract also includes provisions within the logistical sector, operational support and the training of pilots and ground personnel, as well as providing operational capacity to the Kuwaiti Air Force in collaboration with the Italian Air Force. The armament package was not revealed by Finmeccanica, and will be chosen and contractualised later from a range of weapons systems offered by the MBDA group.

According to the MediTelegraph’s sources, the package offered would include air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles including the anti-aircraft missile Marte ER, which was recently chosen by Qatar for a different application. The true value of the contract has not been revealed, because the total consists of a series of system packages and services connected to the provision of the aircraft. According to what has been published up until now, there is talk of seven to eight billion euros, of which over half would go to Finmeccanica. As anticipated, the success of this operation is the result of the synergy between state institutions and industry, which originates from the Italy-Kuwait cooperation agreement in the defence sector, concluded in 2003 and ratified in 2005, followed by a series of meetings before and after the official dialogue in 2011, when it became clear that there was a firm intention to incentivise collaboration at the governmental and industrial levels within the Defence field.

According to the MediTelegraph’s sources, it was precisely on the occasion of the meeting in Kuwait City on 18 July, 2012, when then-Italian Secretary of Defence-National National Director for Weapons, General Claudio Debertolis, then C.E.O. of Alenia Aermacchi Giuseppe Giordo, then head of IV Division coordinating between the General Defence Secretariat Weapons Programme, Working Engineer Enzo Vacciarelli, who was recently named the commanding officer of the Italian Air Force, and the then Italian ambassador to Kuwait, when the Italian organisation obtained in the course of the same meeting, the signature of a very important Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) for the development of relations between the two countries, setting the groundwork for the conclusion of the current contract, and more. With this MoA, the parties have finalised the close collaboration that will affect, among other things, the basic and advanced phases of flight training, the plan being in this context to create a Steering Committee that would have the task of monitoring the implementation and performance of the training activity according to the agreed-upon timeframes, through subsequent agreements for industrial, financial, and military initiatives.

According to the MediTelegraph’s sources, this MoA was followed in the first half of 2013 by an “implementation agreement” with the Italian Air Force, in which the framework for the collaboration between the two countries was further defined, including the Italian Air Force’s support for the trials of the Eurofighter Typhoon in the context of the acquisition programme for new combat aircraft, which the Middle Eastern country launched in 2010. Over the course of the trials held in Kuwait and in Italy, the Italian Air Force’s aircraft were used, with the support of the Alenia Aermacchi company, whose involvement contributed to the full success of the sale in the face of unyielding competition from the French aircraft Rafale and the American F-18E.

In that regard, industrial sources commented on the fact that the Kuwaiti tenders saw a careful operational and technical assessment of several competitors, a situation that has not occurred, except in the case of Austria, in previous provisions of Eurofighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia and Oman. According to the MediTelegraph’s sources, after the technical assessment, long-lasting political work sanctioned the opening of discussions concerning the possible provision of the aircraft.

According to well-informed sources, negotiations started with a team made up of the Ministry of Defence and Alenia Aermacchi, which brought about the agreement between the governments on 11 September, 2015, a fundamental and institutional element of the contract signed today and of what is to come. In the meantime, as established in July, 2012, the technical-institutional framework was created so that Kuwaiti Air Force pilots could prepare and train in Italy, through the Academy in Pozzuoli, the Galatina Flight School in Puglia and then the operational conversion of the same on Typhoon aircraft at the Grosseto airbase, which is the headquarters of the division that is dedicated to this activity.

The training activity began at the Dell’Ami Flight School in Galatina in June, 2013, to arrive at an overall number of about fifty, of which the first student pilots obtained their licences at the beginning of January, 2015, while the previous ones had taken more advanced training courses. And it is precisely at the Galatina Flight School, where together with student pilots and instructors from various countries, the Kuwaiti Air Force pilots practice on the new generation M-346 Master Advanced Lead-In Fighter Trainer (LIFT) training aircraft, which was conceived and produced by the aircraft division of Finmeccanica, together with a flight and mission training and simulation system, interacting with the aircraft in flight.

According to the MediTelegraph, the July, 2012, agreement and the following implementation agreement in 2013 with the Italian Air Force is preparatory to support the future creation of a flight school by the Kuwaiti Air Force in their own country. This future step will offer Italy and its industry the possibility of putting itself forward for the creation of the infrastructure and for the provision of aircraft training and associated services.

Looking into the future, the Italian Air Force has set the groundwork for the development of basic training aircraft with the M-345 turbofan engine also built by Finmeccanica, and selected the twin-engine Tecnam P2006T aircraft with associated integrated training systems. Military cooperation between the two countries, and related international commitments and commitments in the field of internal security, Libya, Syria, Iraq and ISIS, were at the centre of the conversations that Pinotti had today in Kuwait, not only with Al-Jarrah, but also with Crown Prince Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, and with the Foreign Minister, Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah.

The development of bilateral relations between the two countries was also at the centre of the conversations between the two countries in the technical-industrial field, as witnessed by the close and beneficial cooperation in the aerospace sector, which includes training activities and exercises carried out in Italy in order to support the creation of autonomous competency in Kuwait.