Does Kuwait Buy of Eurofighter Planes Dash Boeing Hopes?

Kuwait also has been in discussions with Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) to buy up to 40 of Boeing’s F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet strike fighters. Whether the deal with Eurofighter will scuttle a Boeing sale is unclear, although in June a source told Defense News that if Kuwait bought the Eurofighter planes it “would not necessarily affect” a potential sale of the Boeing planes to the country.

Boeing needs authorization from the federal government before selling the Super Hornets to a foreign country, and neither that authorization nor an order from Kuwait has been received yet. The U.S. Navy is considering an order for an additional 12 Super Hornets in the 2016 fiscal year, and that combined with an order from Kuwait would keep Boeing’s defense production facilities in St. Louis busy beyond 2017, when current production of roughly 24 planes a month could end.

According to a report at Bloomberg, the Typhoon has a list price of $158 million per copy, which pencils out to a total of more than $4.4 billion for the Kuwaiti order. An additional $56 million or so per plane would go toward support and training. Eurofighter’s last sale in the Middle East came in 2012, when it sold 12 jets to Oman.

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