"The opportunity book for Typhoon is as good as I've seen it in the last two years and probably as good as it's been in quite some time," CEO Charles Woodburn told reporters on a call.

The Eurofighter, a joint project between BAE, France's Airbus and Italy's Leonardo, was buoyed by a 24-jet 5 billion pound deal with Qatar last December.

BAE hopes to win further orders from Belgium and Malaysia, while a long-anticipated bigger order expected from existing customer Saudi Arabia has yet to materialise.

He also hinted at further growth for the company's U.S. business depending on that country's defence budgets. The U.S. accounts for over a third of BAE's sales.

"Depending on exactly what materialises with the U.S. budgets we could be looking from good growth to even better in '19, and '20," he said.

(Reporting by Sarah Young, Editing by Paul Sandle)