National Defence committee  Clearly, I can guarantee we will be in a position to offer Canada establishing a final assembly line on Canadian territory, and 65 aircraft would be more than enough to make the establishment of a final assembly line in the country economically convenient. As for the number of jobs concerned, the final assembly line in itself doesn't create too many jobs, because the process is quite automated.

National Defence committee  We have no information that such specific detail has been requested.

National Defence committee  I'm not familiar with the level of detail that has been provided to the Canadian defence committee on the Eurofighter Typhoon. Given the time when this data was provided and the level of classification imposed, I'm led to believe that there are far more data required to make a sound assessment of the capabilities of the Eurofighter Typhoon, especially when we have to use simulation models like operational effectiveness.

National Defence committee  I'll be very short. Regarding the stability of the price, we have offered our core nations an average price on lots, and the lots were fairly sizable: 150 aircraft was the first lot, 236 was the second, and another 150 were purchased in the third lot. We are now thinking of trying to further reduce the price of the aircraft to make it more affordable to the core nations and potential export customers, so that these nations would have more funding to allow additional capabilities to be inserted on the platform—which, again, has significant growth potential to accommodate several more improvements, from the availability of new sensors to new capabilities, new weapons, and new missiles that may become available in the next decade or so.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  Correct.

National Defence committee  Yes, I can confirm that the Eurofighter Typhoon can operate with NATO forces. Italy and the U.K. are part of NATO, and all their assets have thorough NATO interoperable capabilities. The air forces of Italy and the United Kingdom have chosen to operate the Eurofighter Typhoon in the air-to-air role.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, good afternoon. My name is Andrea Nappi, and I’m here today to represent the supervisory board of the Eurofighter GmbH consortium, whose headquarters are based in Munich, Germany. The shareholders of the consortium are Alenia Aeronautica, BAE Systems, EADS Germany, and EADS Spain.