Eurofighter Typhoon

The Eurofighter Typhoon is a twin-engine, canard-delta wing, multirole combat aircraft, designed and built by a consortium of three companies: EADS, Alenia Aeronautica  and BAE Systems; working through a holding company, Eurofighter GmbH, which was formed in 1986. The project  is managed by the NATO Eurofighter and Tornando Management Agency, which acts as the prime customer.

The series production of the Eurofighter Typhoon is underway, and the aircraft is being procured under separate contracts, named "tranches", each for aircraft with generally improved capabilities. The aircraft has entered service with the Austrian Air Force, the Italian Air Force, the German Luftwaff, the British Royal Air Force, the Spanish Air Force, and the Royal Saudi Air Force.

Origins

The UK had identified a requirement for a new fighter as early as 1971. A specification, AST 403, issued by the Air Staff in 1972, resulted in a conventional "tailed" design known as P.96, which was presented in the late 1970s. While the design would have met the Air Staff's requirements, the UK air industry had reservations as it appeared to be very similar to the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, which was then well advanced in its development. The design had little potential for future growth, and when it entered production it would secure few exports in a market in which the Hornet would be well established. However, the simultaneous West German requirement for a new fighter had led by 1979 to the development of the TKF-90 concept. This was a cranked delta wing design with forward canard controls and artificial stability. Although the British Aerospace designers rejected some of its advanced features such as vectoring engine nozzles and vented trailing-edge controls, they agreed with the overall configuration.

In 1979,Messerschmitt-bolkow-blohm (MBB) and British Aerospace (BAe) presented a formal proposal to their respective governments for the ECF, the European Collaborative Fighter or European Combat Fighter. In October 1979 Dassault joined the ECF team for a tri-national study, which became known as the European Combat Aircraft. It was at this stage of development that the Eurofighter name was first attached to the aircraft. The development of different national prototypes continued. France produced the ACX. The UK produced two designs; the P.106 was a single-engined "lightweight" fighter, superficially resembling the JAS 39 Gripen, the P.110 was a twin-engined fighter. The P.106 concept was rejected by the RAF, on the grounds that it had "half the effectiveness of the two-engined aircraft at two thirds of the cost". West Germany continued to refine the TFK-90 concept. The ECA project collapsed in 1981 for several reasons including differing requirements, Dassault's insistence on "design leadership" and the British preference for a new version of the RB 199 to power the aircraft versus the French preference for the new Snecma M88.

As a result the Panavia partners (MBB, BAe and Aeritalia) launched the Agile Combat Aircraft (ACA) programme in April 1982. The ACA was very similar to the BAe P.110, having a cranked delta wing, canards and a twin tail. One major external difference was the replacement of the side mounted engine intakes with a chin intake. The ACA was to be powered by a modified version of the RB199. The German and Italian governments withdrew funding, and the UK Ministry of Defence agreed to fund 50% of the cost with the remaining 50% to be provided by industry. MBB and Aeritalia signed up with the aim of producing two aircraft, one at Warton  and one by MBB. In May 1983 BAe announced a contract with the Mod for the development and production of an ACA demonstrator, the Experimental Aircraft Programme.

In 1983 the Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain launched the Future European Fighter Aircraft (FEFA) programme. The aircraft was to have short take off and landing (STOL) and beyond visual range (BVR) capabilities. In 1984 France reiterated its requirement for a carrier-capable version and demanded a leading role. The West Germany, UK and Italy opted out and established a new EFA programme. In Turin on 2 August 1985, West Germany, UK and Italy agreed to go ahead with the Eurofighter; and confirmed that France, along with Spain, had chosen not to proceed as a member of the project. Despite pressure from France, Spain rejoined the Eurofighter project in early September 1985. France officially withdrew from the project to pursue its own ACX project, which was to become the Dassault Rafale.

 By 1986, the cost of the programme had reached £180 million. When the EAP programme had started, the cost was supposed to be equally shared by both government and industry, but the West German and Italian government wavered on the agreement and the three main industrial partners had to provide £100 million to keep the programme from ending. In April 1986 the BAe EAP was rolled out at BAe Warton, by this time also partially funded by MBB, BAe and Aeritalia. The EAP first flew on 6 August 1986. The Eurofighter bears a strong resemblance to the EAP. Design work continued over the next five years using data from the EAP. Initial requirements were: UK: 250 aircraft, Germany: 250, Italy: 165 and Spain: 100. The share of the production work was divided among the countries in proportion to their projected procurement – DASA (33%),British Aerospace  (33%),Aeritalia (21%), and Construcciones Aeronauticas SA (CASA) (13%).

The Munich based Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH was established in 1986 to manage development of the project and EuroJet Turbo GmbH, the alliance of Rolls-Royce, MTU Aero Engines, FiatAvio (now Avio) and ITP  for development of the EJ200. The aircraft was known as Eurofighter EFA from the late 1980s until it was renamed EF 2000 in 1992.

By 1990, the selection of the aircraft's radar had become a major stumbling block. The UK, Italy and Spain supported the Ferranti Defence Systems -led ECR-90, while Germany preferred the APG-65 based MSD2000 (a collaboration between Hughes, AEG and GEC-Marconi). An agreement was reached after UK Defence Secretary Tom King assured his West German counterpart Gerhard Stoltenberg that the British government would approve the project and allow GEC to acquire Ferranti Defence Systems from its troubled parent. GEC thus withdrew its support for the MSD2000.

Testing

The maiden flight of the Eurofighter prototype took place in Bavaria on 27 March 1994, flown by DASA Chief Test Pilot Peter Weger. On 9 December 2004, Eurofighter Typhoon IPA4 began three months of Cold Environmental Trials (CET) at the Vidsel Air Base in Sweden, the purpose of which was to verify the operational behaviour of the aircraft and its systems in temperatures between −25 and 31 °C. The maiden flight of Instrumented Production Aircraft 7 (IPA7), the first fully equipped Tranche 2 aircraft, took place from EADS' Manching airfield on 16 January 2008.

In May 2007, Eurofighter Development Aircraft 5 made the first flight with the CAESAR demonstrator system, a development of the Euroradar CAPTOR incorporating Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology. The production version of the CAPTOR-E radar was being proposed as part of Tranche 3 of the Typhoon from 2012. Tranche 2 aircraft use the non AESA, mechanically scanned Captor-M which incorporates weight and space provisions for possible upgrade to CAESAR (AESA) standard in the future. The Italian Air Force doubted that the AESA radar would be ready in time for Tranche 3 production. In July 2010, Eurofighter announced that the AESA radar would enter service in 2015.

Orders

The first production contract was signed on 30 January 1998 between Eurofighter GmbH, Eurojet and NETMA. The procurement totals were as follows: UK 232, Germany 180, Italy 121, and Spain 87. Production was again allotted according to procurement: British Aerospace (37.42%), DASA (29.03%), Aeritalia (19.52%), and CASA (14.03%).

On 2 September 1998, a naming ceremony was held at Farnborough, United Kingdom. This saw the Typhoon name formally adopted, initially for export aircraft only. This was reportedly resisted by Germany; perhaps because the Hawker Typhoon was a fighter-bomber aircraft which served with the RAF during the Second World War against German targets. The name "Spitfire II" (for the famous British WWII fighter, the Supermarine Spitfire) had also been considered and rejected for the same reason early in the development programme. In September 1998 contracts were signed for production of 148 Tranche 1 aircraft and procurement of long lead-time items for Tranche 2 aircraft. In March 2008 the final aircraft out of Tranche 1 was delivered to the German Luftwaffe, with all successive deliveries being at the Tranche 2 standard. On 21 October 2008, the first two of 91 Tranche 2 aircraft, ordered four years before, were delivered to RAF Coningsby.

In October 2008, the Eurofighter nations were considering splitting the 236-fighter Tranche 3 into two parts. In June 2009, RAF Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy suggested that the RAF fleet might only be 123 jets, instead of the 232 previously planned. In spite of this reduction in the number of required aircraft, on 14 May 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown confirmed that the UK would move ahead with the third batch purchase. A contract for the first part, Tranche 3A, was signed at the end of July 2009 for 112 aircraft split across the four partner nations, including 40 aircraft for the UK, 31 for Germany, 21 for Italy and 20 for Spain. These 40 aircraft were said to have fully covered the UK's obligations in the project by Air Commodore Chris Bushell, due to cost overruns in the project.

Costs

In 1988, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces told the UK House of Commons that the European Fighter Aircraft would "be a major project, costing the United Kingdom about £7 billion". It was soon apparent that a more realistic estimate was £13 billion, made up of £3.3 billion development costs plus £30 million per aircraft. By 1997 the estimated cost was £17 billion; by 2003, £20 billion, and the in-service date (2003; defined as the date of delivery of the first aircraft to the RAF) was 54 months late. After 2003 the Ministry of Defence have refused to release updated cost estimates on the grounds of 'commercial sensitivity', however in 2011 the National Audit Office estimated the UK's "total programme cost [would] eventually hit £37 billion".

By 2007, Germany estimated the system cost (aircraft, training plus spare parts) to €120m and said it was in perpetual increase. On 17 June 2009, Germany ordered 31 aircraft of Tranche 3A for €2,800m, leading to a system cost of €90m per aircraft. The UK’s Committee of Public Accounts reported that the mismanagement of the project had helped increase the cost of each aircraft by 75 percent. Defence Secretary Lian Fox responded that "I am determined that in the future such projects are properly run from the outset, and I have announced reforms to reduce equipment delays and cost overruns."

Delays

The financial burdens placed on Germany by reunification caused Helmut Kohl to make an election promise to cancel the Eurofighter. In early to mid-1991 German Defence Minister Volker Ruhe sought to withdraw Germany from the project in favour of using Eurofighter technology in a cheaper, lighter plane. Due to the amount of money already spent on development, the number of jobs dependent on the project, and the binding commitments on each partner government, Helmut Kohl  was unable to withdraw; "Rühe's predecessors had locked themselves into the project by a punitive penalty system of their own devising."

In 1995 concerns over workshare appeared. Since the formation of Eurofighter the workshare split had been agreed at the 33/33/21/13 (United Kingdom/Germany/Italy/Spain) based on the number of units being ordered by each contributing nation. All the nations then reduced their orders. The UK cut its orders from 250 to 232, Germany from 250 to 140, Italy from 165 to 121 and Spain from 100 to 87. According to these order levels the workshare split should have been 39/24/22/15 UK/Germany/Italy/Spain, Germany was unwilling to give up such a large amount of work. In January 1996, after much negotiation between German and UK partners, a compromise was reached whereby Germany would purchase another 40 aircraft. The workshare split is now 43% for EADS MAS in Germany and Spain; 37.5% BAE Systems in the UK; and 19.5% for Alenia in Italy.

The next major milestone came at the Farnborough Airshow in September 1996. The UK announced the funding for the construction phase of the project. In November 1996 Spain confirmed its order but Germany delayed its decision. After much diplomatic activity between Germany and UK, an interim funding arrangement of DM 100 million (€51 million) was contributed by the German government in July 1997 to continue flight trials. Further negotiation finally resulted in German approval to purchase the Eurofighter in October 1997.

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