National Defence committee  We have offered the final assembly line already in two competitive tenders that we are currently participating in, namely those with Japan and India. We were offering this to Greece in the early days, when this was an active campaign, before the difficult economic situation of Greece that now is putting this campaign aside a little bit.

National Defence committee  For Turkey, the offer has not been formally taken up by the country. We are still discussing and promoting the campaign, so there is no formal requirement from Turkey in that sense. But with Japan and India, where formal competitions are currently under way, we have put it in our proposal.

National Defence committee  We are competing for what is called the MMRCA; that's “medium multi-role combat aircraft”. Today there are six contenders.

National Defence committee  The current requirement is for 126 aircraft plus an option for another 63.

National Defence committee  They have a very strong requirement for licensed production. The last tranche, of 62 aircraft, would reach a level of 60% of the total weapon system manufactured by local industry.

National Defence committee  The prediction in that respect is quite difficult. We have experience from the Hawk acquisition, which took a very long time. What I can say is that we made the formal offer in 2008, and it had two years' validity. Within those two years we had a lot of discussion, assessment, and flight evaluations, but this was not enough.

National Defence committee  The answer is yes. Maybe you can comment on the recent declaration by Austria.

National Defence committee  And relying only on the low observability may be a fatal mistake.

National Defence committee  Confirmed.

National Defence committee  We have never received a formal request for information, not to mention a request for a quotation.

National Defence committee  Unfortunately, we are not the right party to respond to this question. You should raise the question with those who have not raised the issue with us. We are ready to respond to any RFI or RFQ we receive. We have responded to many of those, including countries where you may say we would have a very limited possibility of competing, and we are ready to support any clear and transparent acquisition process by any country.

National Defence committee  That's in our DNA, I should say.

National Defence committee  As I've said, I can only comment on the cost figures for the F-35 that I have read in the literature. It's clear that we can match and significantly improve those figures with the Eurofighter platform.

National Defence committee  The current standard of the aircraft does not have electronic scan radar. However, we have already started a program for developing and integrating an in-scan capability on the Eurofighter Typhoon, and the plan is to have this capability in the fleet by 2015.

National Defence committee  Virtually there is no difference in terms of hardware except from the progressive cure of obsolescence. In terms of capability, there is no difference between tranche two or tranche three aircraft. Of course, all newly built aircraft will have to be tranche three.