Maintenance contract for Typhoon supports Bristol jobs. Union calls on government to purchase additional Typhoons.

Unite, the UK’s leading trade union in the defence industry, has welcomed the government’s decision to award a £563million maintenance and repair contract for the RAF’s Typhoon fighter jets to Rolls Royce.

Most of the work on the Typhoon aircraft engines will take place at the engineering giant's defence headquarters in Bristol. The agreement will see Rolls-Royce providing maintenance and repair to 130 EJ200 engines, supporting around 200 direct jobs in the process.

Unite represents hundreds of workers at Rolls Royce and at BAE Systems in Lancashire where the Typhoon is made. Today, the union repeated its calls on the UK government to purchase an additional tranche of Typhoon jets rather than the US-made F35.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said:

“This deal with Rolls Royce is welcome news for the UK defence industry and reaffirms that this country has some of the best engineers and aerospace workers in the world. The government now needs to commit to buying new Typhoon jets for the RAF, which will guarantee UK manufacturing and supply chain jobs for the next decade and preserve the essential skills needed to manufacture and assemble the next generation of fighter jets.”

Unite is pushing the case for the government to make the decision to buy UK Typhoons to replace the ageing RAF Fleet and rather than US F35s. This decision on new aircraft is expected soon and failure to do the right thing will result in a weakened defence industry and an erosion of critical skills. Not only does the assembly of Typhoons in Britain ensure that jobs and skills are retained for sixth generation Tempest production, boosting the economy but they also ensure a UK supply chain that is needed for national security at a time of global uncertainty.

“In February, the PM promised that he will ‘translate defence spending into British growth, British jobs, British skills, British innovation’. The true test of that promise will be whether aging RAF fighter jets will be replaced with state-of-the-art, British made T5 Typhoons. Every other partner country involved with the Eurofighter/Typhoon, is buying more of these fighters for their own defence. The government has made the money available, now it needs to prove that it will really be using it to back Britain.”