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Discussions are ongoing about the option of service life extension for national TORNADO fleets to beyond the year 2025 and the replacement of the EUROFIGHTER TYPHOONs at some point in the future. Against this background, ESD spoke with LtGen. Gabriele Salvestroni, the General Manager of the NATO EF 2000 and TORNADO Development, Production & Logistics Management Agency NETMA.
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ESD: What are the advantages of the “Agreement to Streamline the Type and Airworthiness Certification Process and Reduce the Workload on Nations and their Military Aviation Authorities” for the EUROFIGHTER/TYPHOON programme?
Gen. Salvestroni: Nations and Industry have adopted the principles of the
European Military Airworthiness Requirements (EMAR) for EUROFIGHTER to allow granting design organisation privileges for minor changes and repairs. Since its
first step of implementation in 2016, it has released nations’ scarce resources from involvement in the certification of many minor changes and at the same time reduced the processing time of those changes by two-thirds, helping production deliveries. Reliance on the respective ‘lead’ certification officials in the progression of major changes is now underpinned in a fully regulated compliant manner by mutual recognition and can therefore free three-quarters of effort from nations at a system level.
Still, we do not see the full benefit because of a surge of national clearances. The next steps are related to repair, and this is expected to help in-service fleet maintenance by allowing repairs developed once to be applied everywhere without further approval loops. Retrospectively, a big effort for processes and approval of design organisations has been necessary. On the other hand,
we have commonly achieved the first conversion of a ‘legacy’ fighter aircraft to EMAR principles, which has future-proofed the EUROFIGHTER programme.
ESD: What chance do you envision for subsequent EUROFIGHTER
Tranche 3B or 4 production programmes?
Gen. Salvestroni: At present, Tranche 3 production and assembly for core nations is continuing, along with production orders for our export customers in Oman, Kuwait and Qatar. While the core nations continue to regularly review the composition of their air forces,
the procurement of an additional Tranche always remains a possibility and of course the German Air Force recently released a request for information for a possible procurement of additional aircraft to replace its TORNADO fleet and will be considering several candidates including the EUROFIGHTER.
ESD: Your previous position was that of the Comandante Logistico dell’Aeronautica Militare, thus offering insight into the
spare parts supply to the Italian Air Force. What is your opinion of the spare parts management in the scope of the EUROFIGHTER programme?
Gen. Salvestroni: In the late ‘90s, the four nations set up arrangements to manage the supply chain for the in-service phase of the EUROFIGHTER in a
centralised manner, via two main contracts: one for the procurement of new spares and one for the repair of repairable parts. The former was based on best endeavour, while the latter required a turn-around time for a selected number of items (avionics), with the others managed on a case-by-case basis. For both contracts, IT tools were available, which provided full visibility on the status of the procurement or repair orders placed by the customer.
Around 2012, nations decided to change this spare management construct, with the aim of increasing their fleet availability and reducing the sustainment costs. A new suite of contracts was agreed with Eurofighter GmbH and the former repair contract was replaced by
Contract No.3 (Dec 2016), where each nation defined its specific requirements for a support solution based on availability at platform, equipment or component level. Thus, nations moved from centralised spares management to
national support solutions agreed with their respective industries, with specific performance measurements, terms and conditions.
It is premature to say whether the new course undertaken by nations is delivering the envisaged benefits. At the moment,
nations are satisfied in terms of increased fleet operational availability, but cost savings are still marginal. Moreover, the new construct has implied a
loss of transparency and visibility of the spares management at international level, since the activities are directly performed by the national industries. What I can say is that the new course for support undertaken by nations
cannot be reversed for a number of good reasons, but I am convinced that some corrections shall be applied to fully exploit the significant advantages that an international programme can offer to the participating nations.
ESD: What is the status for the retrofit of an
AESA radar?
Gen. Salvestroni: As with any project of this complexity, there are still technical challenges to be overcome,
but overall efforts to fit an AESA radar to TYPHOON are proceeding well. The AESA system will bring a step-change in capability and will also be supported by a
fundamental reworking of the methodology used to manage sensors on board the aircraft. Furthermore, nations are already looking at the next evolution of the TYPHOON’s radar systems, to make sure the platform continues to be credible as the threat environment develops.
ESD: Considering the lessons learned from the TORNADO programme, what measures are taken by NETMA to
prevent a separation of technology standards between the four nations in the EUROFIGHTER/TYPHOON programme?
Gen. Salvestroni: The TYPHOON programme is built around consensus between the four core nations, and so it is essential that they have a very clear process for maximising commonality in their requirements. Presenting industry with a single joint requirement helps to minimise divergence within the technical solutions which they then develop. Inevitably, there will be times when a nation requires something unique – in support of current operations, for example – but
the programme philosophy is to draw these individual technology solutions back into the common baseline as quickly as possible. Without this, the programme would soon be managing numerous variants of TYPHOON for each nation, with all the cost and complexity this would entail.
ESD:
Does NETMA have a role for the export customers like Austria, Saudi Arabia or Oman? Do you support the EUROFIGHTER export campaigns?
Gen. Salvestroni:The role and relationship of NETMA with
Austria and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is clearly defined through specific Association Memorandums Of Understanding (MOU) between the four core nations and each export partner nation.
Under the umbrella of these MOUs, both export partners have a Programme Liaison Office (PLO) within NETMA. The objective of these PLOs is to share information and participate in meetings of the International EUROFIGHTER TYPHOON programme (managed by NETMA) in several areas: new developments, operational experience, flight safety, in-service support, configuration management, and so on.
In the case of
Oman, since
there is not an agreed Association MOU, NETMA does not have any relationship with this export nation. With regard to supporting the EUROFIGHTER export campaigns, NETMA provides advice to nations and industry partners on programme impacts and potential mitigations, provides access to shared assets, coordinates the release of appropriate documentation, controls MOU support and contracting action, gives advice on accession planning for NATO member customers as well as association activities. Also, during early stages of each export prospect or campaign, NETMA, on behalf of NATO, represents the core programme nations as the governmental defence organisation, at least until a lead nation is agreed at ministerial level for the specific export campaign.
The questions were asked by Jürgen Hensel and Ulrich Rapreger