asked Her Majesty's Government:

What action is proposed for restructuring the Eurofighter/Typhoon four-nation partnership; and what effect such changes will have on the date of introduction into service of a variant optimised in the air-to-ground role. [HL379]

The four Typhoon partner nations are at the final stages of agreeing a future capability programme with industry which will introduce a full air-to-surface capability. The contractual terms and conditions for this programme will drive improvements to the Typhoon programme through:

greater empowerment of Eurofighter GmbH;

risk sharing across the four Eurofighter partner companies; and

incentivised performance objectives.

We are also working with our partner nations to establish a new through-life capability management model across all nations to assist industry's future planning.