Eurofighter: Securing Europe from the Atlantic to the eastern border

The Eurofighter, developed by a consortium of Airbus, Leonardo, and BAE Systems, provides security across the entire European continent. It protects airspace and guarantees European sovereignty against external threats such as Russia.

On October 23rd, a Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jet  and an Il-76 tanker aircraft crossed the Lithuanian border for a few seconds. At that moment, two Spanish Eurofighters, belonging to the NATO Air Policing mission in the Baltic countries, were immediately alerted, patrolling, and monitoring the airspace. This is not the first time the Russians have violated the airspace of a European Union and NATO country.

                                 A German Eurofighter landing during Ocean Sky Exercise 2025

                                                 

Honing skills: The Ocean Sky multinational exercise

This constant threat of airspace violation highlights the critical need for peak readiness across the continent.

It is precisely to maintain this readiness that NATO and allied air forces regularly participate in complex training exercises, prominently featuring the Eurofighter aircraft. This year, the Spanish Air and Space Force hosted Ocean Sky 2025 in the Canary Islands, a multinational exercise bringing together up to 40 aircraft to improve interoperability and air control tactics.

The exercise brought together a powerful fleet, including Spanish and German Eurofighter jets, Spanish F-18s, US F-15s, and Portuguese and Greek F-16s. Most significantly, Ocean Sky 2025 marked a historic milestone by hosting the Indian, Russian-built Sukhoi Su-30 for the first time. This participation not only made India the first non-NATO nation to join the exercise but also provided the main, highly valuable tactical attraction of this edition.

“The Canary Islands offer ideal weather conditions that allow for full mission execution, and critically, they provide traffic-free airspace in the south, ensuring minimal disruption to civil aviation,” explained Spanish Air and Space Force Lieutenant Colonel Jesús Andrés Margaretto, the Exercise Control Director for Ocean Sky 2025.

Training for real-world threats: Eurofighter vs. Su-30

Major Juan Bengoechea, a Spanish Eurofighter pilot, was the Mission Commander for one of the Ocean Sky missions: 40 aircraft, head-to-head in two teams, composed of twenty aircraft.

“The idea of these missions is to take the strengths that every nation has in its capabilities in order to put them together for the task”, he said.

                                  Spanish and allied fighter jets ready for the next Ocean Sky mission

Within these missions, the Spanish and German Eurofighter pilots, loaded with Meteor, Iris-T and AMRAAM missiles, had to ‘fight’ with and against the Sukhoi Su-30s, providing a highly valuable lesson for real operational theatres. 

“It is a very capable, very agile aircraft,” says German Eurofighter pilot, callsign ‘Bigfoot’. “The Russians have also the Su-30s, and that is why [training with the Indians is] very useful and very important for us, to get to know this aircraft and see what it can do in the air, how it fights, in order to leverage the strengths of the Eurofighter,” he added.

                     Spanish Eurofighter taking off during a Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) mission in Estonia

“The Sukhoi is our main opponent and threat, so we train against it”

Although individual German fighter pilots have joined in the past, this year marks the first time the Luftwaffe is participating in Ocean Sky as an air force.

“Our task is to defend our airspace or NATO airspace, and this can only be achieved by constant training. As Germany, we will never do it alone. We always rely on our partners and work together. Here [...] we can train at a really high level, together with our partner nations”, said Lieutenant Colonel Christian Blohm, Chief of Detachment for the German contingent.

“The Sukhoi is our main opponent and threat, so we train against it. As this is a Russian aircraft, it is useful for my crews to see it live, experience its performance and fly and fight against it”, he added. “The things we learn here, we apply in our missions”.

                                 German Eurofighter during Ocean Sky 2025

Eurofighter: the guarantor of European values

Different cultures, different languages, different climates. The volcanic terrain of the Canary Islands bears little resemblance to the dense forests of the Baltic States or the wide plains of Romania, where NATO Air Policing missions are currently being executed.

Yet, all these territories - whether Mediterranean nations like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, or those bordering Russia like Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria - share fundamental values: the European aspiration to be free, prosperous, and secure.

It is this commitment that the Eurofighter protects. Regardless of whether the threat originates from the eastern flank, the Eurofighter stands as Europe's most effective guarantor. With 760 units ordered worldwide, and almost 650 of these commissioned by Germany, Spain, the UK, Italy, Austria, and more recently, Turkey, its presence defines the continental shield: from the Atlantic outposts of the Canary Islands, where the Eurofighter will soon permanently replace the aging Spanish F-18s, to the critical eastern frontier, ensuring security across every mile of European airspace.