Eurofighter Typhoon

Scorpion82 said:
And again a thread is hijacked and derailed into a "donate everything to Ukraine" thread...
Click to expand...

My aim there is to show there is a route to keep c120 Typhoon in service beyond their retirement date, which has benefits for the consortium partners outside of geopolitical/security arena's.....keeping an additional 120 aircraft in the air means more maintenance, support and parts funds to the partners long term....allowing 120 high end aircraft to be parked up/scrapped with over half of their airframe hours remaining doesn't make sense in todays world...

Scorpion82 said:
Concerning export prospects @timmymagic 200 A/C is rather optimistic. For Turkey it doesn't make too much sense, Qatar maybe, but no current indications, just an option that has been there since the original Qatar contract was signed in 2017. Saudi-Arabia 48-54, the 72 figure can be ruled out as long outdated. Follow on UK order, I concur, it's unlikely.
Halcon 3 I have my doubts, they have yet to sign Halcon 2 and the Italian follow on order is probably more of an industry political move that may indicate that Egypt is dead. Austria considered acquisition of three additional aircraft (used T1 presumably twinseats) and an upgrade contract was signed, interestingly with Italy as partner (Spain has its national T1 upgrades, GE and UK are retiring them).
Poland, I don't see it coming. Poland has been in the crosshairs since the early 2000s, what came out of this were F-16 Blk 52 and F-35A. I don't see them buying European A/C. I clearly weigh potential against probability here. Eurofighter forecasts have always been optimistic and were never achieved...
Click to expand...

There is a degree of optimism there, and I'm very clear on that. But I would note that my original estimate, when I started updating this, was 160 a/c....which do I recall you yourself also said was far too optimistic...but events have moved on rather rapidly, and there are now 127 firm orders in the bag....80% of the way there....only 18 months later...I don't think its that far beyod the realms of possibiliy for the potential Saudi and Qatari order's to get them over the line of c200 in the next year or 2.

Halcon II is absolutely nailed on, all negotiations concluded just contract signature now...no doubt awaiting the industrial/political event where these things are usually announced for a bit of impact. It's my understanding that Spain's T1 upgrade is rather limited and they will also be looking to retire post 2030 as a result of that limited upgrade but also because they would be potentially the last T1 operator with just 17 a/c (as Austria has signalled its intention to purchase F-35A c2030, remains to be seen if they do that though). A 'Halcon III' is speculative on my part based on comments from Spanish sources to well placed journos around Typhoon and a general cooling towards F-35. How that plays out in reality is anyones guess....I can't see how they can't look to get at least 15 F-35B at some point in the near future., but a split buy with a small number F-35A might be a step too far.

I suspect the Italian order is compensatory as well....but its still 24 aircraft, possibly to replace the becalmed Egyptian order, so matters little to the total. Italy is retiring its Tranche 1 and replacing with those 24 new a/c. Hence why there will be so many Tranche 1 aircraft will be left out there...

UK is unlikely to happen. It's been officially announced that the only platform that would be considered to 'grow numbers' would be F-35B. Which in effect means the F-35B Tranche 2 buy of 27 a/c, which we already know about. UK is all in on GCAP beyond that, and if by some miracle additional funds materialised RAF would probably opt for putting ECRS.Mk2 in the Tranche 2 fleet ahead of a new purchase. Which would make sense....however there has, in the last couple of days, been an intervention by the Unions...who are themselves pushing now for a 24 a/c buy on the basis of a make work for Warton to keep it busy in the run up to GCAP. That is a sensible aim, and no doubt BAE have discretely encouraged/not dissuaded them from making that argument. The Unions do have power and influence within Labour (though nowhere near what they used to or what they would like). Add in the fact that a UK Minister has been in Saudi and Turkey recently....and I think Warton will need at least 1 of those, alongside all the MLU and component manufacture for other Typhoon orders, in order to reach the beginning of full on GCAP work...if the Saudi, Polish or Turkish order doesn't arrive HMG will have to step in...no-one wants a valley of death like the nuclear sub and shipbuilding programmes faced....because it costs more...
 
timmymagic said:
My aim there is to show there is a route to keep c120 Typhoon in service beyond their retirement date, which has benefits for the consortium partners outside of geopolitical/security arena's.....keeping an additional 120 aircraft in the air means more maintenance, support and parts funds to the partners long term....allowing 120 high end aircraft to be parked up/scrapped with over half of their airframe hours remaining doesn't make sense in todays world...
Click to expand...
[/QUOTE]

I'd rather send the T1s to the boneyard and scrap them, which is at least going to save us the money for their upkeep and sustainment. Giving them away for free to a country that could neither afford to buy and operate them is going to cost us a lot of money in the long. We already sank billions that will never be returned and it would add another few billions in the long term, if we sent them down the throat of Ukraine, as it's bankrupt and unable to psy for anything. The country solely continues to exist on the back of us taxpayers from donoring countries. It's not done by sending the aircraft to Ukraine, you'd need to set up the infrastructure, supply chain and build up a spares pool and weapons stock, train aircrew and ground personnel etc. There isn't too much T1 specific GSE, much of it is shared with the T2/3 and soon T4 fleet in the future. In other words more money needs to be thrown at UA to produce and send that equipment. Yes our industry would make profit, from our money, not from the end user. So a few benefit on the back of the majority. The costs for upkeeping and sustainment aren't insignificant and UA is unable to pay for it. There is unlikely to be any serious personnel build up within industry to continue sustainment of the T1 fleet and the scarce engineering ressources will likely be drawn away from Core and paying Export customers at their expense.

I also doubt that 120 A/C will be left. To spare anyway and operators like Austria, Spain and Italy won't be able to give away their aircraft any time soon either. At best some 24 UK and maybe some 12-15 GE aircraft might be made available in theory. The rest is already stripped off still usable spare parts to keep the remaining fleet going and a couple of airframes have already been scrapped, ended up as instructional airframes, gate guards etc.

Add an optimistic 17 A/C from Spain, 26 from IT and 15 A/C from AT that's 58 airframes, plus the aforemention, let's say 40 at best. So round about 100 A/C at best.

timmymagic said:
There is a degree of optimism there, and I'm very clear on that. But I would note that my original estimate, when I started updating this, was 160 a/c....which do I recall you yourself also said was far too optimistic...but events have moved on rather rapidly, and there are now 127 firm orders in the bag....80% of the way there....only 18 months later...I don't think its that far beyod the realms of possibiliy for the potential Saudi and Qatari order's to get them over the line of c200 in the next year or 2.

Halcon II is absolutely nailed on, all negotiations concluded just contract signature now...no doubt awaiting the industrial/political event where these things are usually announced for a bit of impact. It's my understanding that Spain's T1 upgrade is rather limited and they will also be looking to retire post 2030 as a result of that limited upgrade but also because they would be potentially the last T1 operator with just 17 a/c (as Austria has signalled its intention to purchase F-35A c2030, remains to be seen if they do that though). A 'Halcon III' is speculative on my part based on comments from Spanish sources to well placed journos around Typhoon and a general cooling towards F-35. How that plays out in reality is anyones guess....I can't see how they can't look to get at least 15 F-35B at some point in the near future., but a split buy with a small number F-35A might be a step too far.

I suspect the Italian order is compensatory as well....but its still 24 aircraft, possibly to replace the becalmed Egyptian order, so matters little to the total. Italy is retiring its Tranche 1 and replacing with those 24 new a/c. Hence why there will be so many Tranche 1 aircraft will be left out there...

UK is unlikely to happen. It's been officially announced that the only platform that would be considered to 'grow numbers' would be F-35B. Which in effect means the F-35B Tranche 2 buy of 27 a/c, which we already know about. UK is all in on GCAP beyond that, and if by some miracle additional funds materialised RAF would probably opt for putting ECRS.Mk2 in the Tranche 2 fleet ahead of a new purchase. Which would make sense....however there has, in the last couple of days, been an intervention by the Unions...who are themselves pushing now for a 24 a/c buy on the basis of a make work for Warton to keep it busy in the run up to GCAP. That is a sensible aim, and no doubt BAE have discretely encouraged/not dissuaded them from making that argument. The Unions do have power and influence within Labour (though nowhere near what they used to or what they would like). Add in the fact that a UK Minister has been in Saudi and Turkey recently....and I think Warton will need at least 1 of those, alongside all the MLU and component manufacture for other Typhoon orders, in order to reach the beginning of full on GCAP work...if the Saudi, Polish or Turkish order doesn't arrive HMG will have to step in...no-one wants a valley of death like the nuclear sub and shipbuilding programmes faced....because it costs more...
Click to expand...

We'll see, the track record of the past 3 decades wasn't particularily stellar. I don't really see what has changed apart from the war mongering that justifies some additional expenditures from the Core nations.
 
FighterJock said:
The Typhoon is actually a swing role fighter with the ability to switch between fighter and attack roles during the same mission so is often seen with both air to air and air to ground weapons.
Click to expand...
The problem is the landing gear that prevents the inner wing pylon being used fully. That does restrict its ground attack/interdiction capability a bit.
 
Last edited:
FighterJock said:
The Typhoon is actually a swing role fighter with the ability to switch between fighter and attack roles during the same mission so is often seen with both air to air and air to ground weapons.
Click to expand...
Primarily designed as an air to air monster. It's like hanging bombs on an F14. You can, but it's not ideal for the job.

While the F-35 was designed from the ground up as an interdictor.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Primarily designed as an air to air monster. It's like hanging bombs on an F14. You can, but it's not ideal for the job.

While the F-35 was designed from the ground up as an interdictor.
Click to expand...
In my opinion that argument doesn’t stand up to scrutiny in this day and age. Modern radars, targeting pods and smart weapons make most current types superior to pure strike or interceptors of previous generations.

Dropping dumb bombs and using cannon and rockets may be a different matter but the Typhoon could probably do that pretty well too.

I think Typhoon has better range than Tornado too? (Mike Sutton’s “Typhoon” book iirc?).
 
Forest Green said:
The problem is the landing gear that prevents the inner wing pylon being used fully. That does restrict its ground attack/interdiction capability a bit.
Click to expand...
Yes, it’s always frustrated me that the Typhoon can’t carry five big drop tanks like the Rafale or Super Hornet. Doesn’t buddy tank either :(
 
SteveO said:
Yes, it’s always frustrated me that the Typhoon can’t carry five big drop tanks like the Rafale or Super Hornet. Doesn’t buddy tank either :(
Click to expand...
It also can't carry 2,000lb bombs or Storm Shadows (on the inner pylon) + 2-3 drop tanks, which would have been a fairly normal mission load for a GR4.
 
The armament envisioned for the swingrole EFA was mostly centered around 500-1000 lb class bombs and AGMs like Maverick, HARM, ALARM. For these types of AG munitions the Typhoon is well suited. The heavy weapons, like Storm Shadow or 2000 lb class weapons are beyond that and the design isn't adapted for these. Strike and ground attack became more important in the post Cold War era, so a fixed airframe configuration to be somehow modified to allow such weapons to be used. Unfortunately the design inherent limitations impose severe restrictions and limit the aircraft's mission effectiveness in these roles requiring heavy weapons.
 
Forest Green said:
It also can't carry 2,000lb bombs or Storm Shadows (on the inner pylon) + 2-3 drop tanks, which would have been a fairly normal mission load for a GR4.
Click to expand...
To be honest, it doesn't seem that weapons above 1000lbs were/are popular with European airforces, the bunker busting/heavy penetration role was to be done by cruise missiles armed with specially designed warheads like the BROACH on Storm Shadow, which I also recently saw in the form of a bomb mounted under the hardpoint of a Hawk.
 
Is there any images available of the Hawk carrying the bomb on the hardpoint? That I would like to see.
 
www.telegraph.co.uk

British-made Typhoon jet production ‘essentially stopped’ as orders dry up

Union chief warns over ‘hammer blow’ to British aircraft industry as RAF eyes American-built jets
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
ukdefencejournal.org.uk

Production ‘essentially stopped’ for British-built Typhoons

Workers at BAE Systems warn that production has "essentially stopped" at Warton, with no future orders in place. They urge the UK government to order 24 Typhoon jets to secure the UK's sovereign defence capabilities.
ukdefencejournal.org.uk ukdefencejournal.org.uk

The titles are bit of a clickbait, since the final assembly at Warton is defintiely not a done job, hence the notion that it has "essentially" stopped. They also produce forward fuselage and other UK-assigned parts regardless for rest of the new EF fleet. Though anyways, it's your usual domestic industry objecting an import of similar (not equivalent, mind you) proudct from abroad.

The key argument in both these articles is that, should the RAF opt to procure more fighters in the short term, it must be Typhoons not the F-35s. They'd really want to see some sales to Turkey and Saudi Arabia, I feel.
 
Scorpion82 said:
Has a Hawk ever been flown with such a weapon? Article seems to be quite old as well.
Click to expand...
Not really the BROACH or any other bunkerbusting ordnance mated with laser guidance kit, as discussed above, but the Indonesian Air Force operates Harpoons mounted on their Hawks so it would definitely be possible, I'd say.
 

Germany To Join Eurofighter Helmet Effort, Buys More Meteor Missiles | Aviation Week Network

The German parliament has given the green light to joining a trilateral effort with Italy and the U.K. to work on a new helmet for Eurofighter Typhoon pilots.
aviationweek.com aviationweek.com
www.janes.com

Luftwaffe to field Striker II HMD for Eurofighter

The Luftwaffe is to join the UK Royal Air Force (RAF) in fielding the BAE Systems Striker II helmet-mounted display (HMD) aboard its Eurofighter combat aircraft.
www.janes.com www.janes.com

AVWeek article says that the Striker II on Eurofighter is a trilateral effort, though who's the third partner besides the UK and Germany? Italy and Spain, nor other export customers are not onboard the Striker II on EF effort. Is it SA since Hensoldt Optronics of SA is part of the programme?
 
Scorpion82 said:
Has a Hawk ever been flown with such a weapon? Article seems to be quite old as well.
Click to expand...
Janes IDR 1997, and to answer your question, the Hawk has flown with decently sized bombs before. In combat too, Zimbabwe made great use of the Hawks in the Congo using various assortments of British and Rhodesian produced bombs.
1731861728365.png

1731861894592.png

FighterJock said:
But what I would want to know is has the bomb entered service with the RAF?
Click to expand...
I doubt it, I think in a combat scenario it would be more realistic to just use Storm Shadows (in regards to a conventional conflict). That being said, I don't have any information to confirm or deny whether they were inducted into service, so I'm just making an educated guess on this one.
 
Don't want to turn this into a Hawk thread, but decently sized wasn't the question here. Apparently not a 2000 lb class bomb as depicted on the Janes IDR 97 photo. Hence my question whether the aircraft was ever flown with these bombs or at least equivalent ones, not half the mass ones. You'll find many shots with aircraft being loaded with different types of stores on ground, but you'll not find images of it "in the air". The Typhoon is a prominent example for this. The numerous "diverse weapons loadout" shots of prototypes from the early 2000s. In reality these weapons weren't integrated and the aircraft never cleared to fly in such a configuration, in some cases it might have even been impossible. If I'm not entirely mistaken the wings were strengthed from T2 to allow carriage of heavy stores like Storm Shadow etc. It's one thing to load a store to a static airframe on ground and another thing to fit it to an aircraft that's meant to fly, as in flight those stores will be subjected to g-loads and drag forces. If the airframe structure/pylons aren't stressed for these loads, you might still fit them for static display, but you couldn't fly with it.
 
Last edited:
That is a shame Sintra, obviously they chose to go with the Storm Shadow instead of the bomb because of the Storm Shadows greater range which would mean that the attacking aircraft could launch at stand of ranges instead.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Primarily designed as an air to air monster. It's like hanging bombs on an F14. You can, but it's not ideal for the job.
Click to expand...
Not the best example. The F-14 proved to be very adept in the air-to-ground role. It was a very stable platform and compared to the original Hornet, it offered great payload/range, superior bring-back capability and had a much better TGP (LANTIRN). The two-man crew was also an inherent advantage notably in the FAC(A) role. It was pretty much the USN's platform of choice for precision strike (especially for missions requiring range and payload) in its last decade of service.

And while primarily designed for the air-to-air role, it was also designed right from the onset to carry bombs. There were tests done very early in the program and, at one point, the Marines were slated to get four F-14 squadrons until this was canned for budgetary reasons.

Now back to topic.
 
Last edited:
FighterJock said:
That is a shame Sintra, obviously they chose to go with the Storm Shadow instead of the bomb because of the Storm Shadows greater range which would mean that the attacking aircraft could launch at stand of ranges instead.
Click to expand...
At roughly the same time GEC Marconi also offered Pegasus for the CASOM program (won by BAE/Matra with the Storm Shadow), it was a turbo jet variant (with BROACH) of the Al Hakim.
 
FighterJock said:
Are there any publicly available images of Pegasus Sintra? You have certainly got me interested in wanting to find out more about it.
Click to expand...
We are hijacking the Phoon topic... :)
Two images bellow (the final design is the white one).
If you are interested on the SR(A) 1236 CASOM program (that lead to Storm Shadow), there's a topic with more information here in the forum.

Cheers
 

Attachments

  • EHJmyv3WoAAdoKt.jpeg
    EHJmyv3WoAAdoKt.jpeg
    90.6 KB · Views: 36
  • unnamed.jpg
    unnamed.jpg
    45.4 KB · Views: 40
Last edited:
The question to ask isn't can various weapons be integrated on Typhoon, but were the funding and test aircraft available for the integration and testing campaign. My impression was always that that aspect of the programme was grossly underfunded/under-resourced, probably due to the costs of Iraq/Afghanistan. OTOH Paveway IV, Brimstone and Storm Shadow with SPEAR 3 to come cover pretty much all likely RAF needs.

WRT Al Hakim, notice the mention of Ferranti, this was about the time (1987) that they were gutted in a fraud by their purchase of US defence contractor International Signal And Control, which turned out to be a shell company funded by illegal arms exports on behalf of US intelligence agencies, leading to their bankruptcy (and to Ferranti co-chairman/ISC founder James Guerin being sentenced to 15 years). GEC Marconi picked up a lot of their defence business, but it threw a lot of questions over all of their contracts that can't have done sales prospects any good.
 
ST21 said:
Not the best example. The F-14 proved to be very adept in the air-to-ground role. It was a very stable platform and compared to the original Hornet, it offered great payload/range, superior bring-back capability and had a much better TGP (LANTIRN). The two-man crew was also an inherent advantage notably in the FAC(A) role. It was pretty much the USN's platform of choice for precision strike (especially for missions requiring range and payload) in its last decade of service.

And while primarily designed for the air-to-air role, it was also designed right from the onset to carry bombs. There were tests done very early in the program and, at one point, the Marines were slated to get four F-14 squadrons until this was canned for budgetary reasons.

Now back to topic.
Click to expand...
Right, but if you're hanging bombs on a Tomcat, you're not taking advantage of all the air-to-air capabilities it has.

Same thing for using Typhoons as bomb trucks. Lots of abilities that you cannot use very well as long as it's got bombs on it. If you dump the bombs to fight air-to-air, that's effectively a mission kill for the bad guys.
 
DWG said:
The question to ask isn't can various weapons be integrated on Typhoon, but were the funding and test aircraft available for the integration and testing campaign. My impression was always that that aspect of the programme was grossly underfunded/under-resourced, probably due to the costs of Iraq/Afghanistan. OTOH Paveway IV, Brimstone and Storm Shadow with SPEAR 3 to come cover pretty much all likely RAF needs.
Click to expand...
Typhoon is much more complicated than the previous generation, which contributes to the amount of effort required. There's only so many engineers and facilities across the partners. It's pretty specialised.

I wouldn't say that the area has been under funded, its more that it just got really expensive compared to precious aircraft, largely driven by the avionics interfaces. e.g. Cost of Weapon Integration. It's different when weapon integration costs £200m rather than £50m.

But the above also overlooks that generally the weapons themselves have got a lot more multi-purpose than they have previously. As you list there, then those weapons cover the whole UK SPEAR portfolio - there's no "gaps" for other weapons. (NB SPEAR5 to replace SPEAR 4)
 
red admiral said:
Typhoon is much more complicated than the previous generation, which contributes to the amount of effort required. There's only so many engineers and facilities across the partners. It's pretty specialised.

I wouldn't say that the area has been under funded, its more that it just got really expensive compared to precious aircraft, largely driven by the avionics interfaces. e.g. Cost of Weapon Integration. It's different when weapon integration costs £200m rather than £50m.
Click to expand...
WRT 'pretty specialised', I'm not so sure. I moved from Typhoon FCS to the Tornado GR.4 weapon systems upgrade and that was staffed with a lot of younger engineers. Best not to repeat my impression of programme management. The main complexity wasn't the new systems so much as the legacy code. Having worked on HUD, FCS and weapon systems projects, they all seemed much of a muchness.

WRT underfunded and under-resourced, wiki notes:
The UK NAO Major Projects Report 2006 reported a 12-month delay in the Meteor programme, pushing the expected in service date back to August 2013.[91] The Chief of Defence Procurement was reported as saying that this was nothing to do with the missile itself, "Meteor is actually going very well."[92] and the lack of Eurofighter aircraft for the integration work was the main reason for the slip. The Minister of Defence Procurement, Lord Drayson, said "I regard this as a Eurofighter Gmbh problem." It was reported that this delay could lead to the RAF operating AMRAAM to a point where stocks of airworthy missiles become low.[93]
Click to expand...
 
red admiral said:
Typhoon is much more complicated than the previous generation, which contributes to the amount of effort required. There's only so many engineers and facilities across the partners. It's pretty specialised.

I wouldn't say that the area has been under funded, its more that it just got really expensive compared to precious aircraft, largely driven by the avionics interfaces. e.g. Cost of Weapon Integration. It's different when weapon integration costs £200m rather than £50m.

But the above also overlooks that generally the weapons themselves have got a lot more multi-purpose than they have previously. As you list there, then those weapons cover the whole UK SPEAR portfolio - there's no "gaps" for other weapons. (NB SPEAR5 to replace SPEAR 4)
Click to expand...
The idea that its /was more complicated or more expensive to integrate atg munitions on the Phoon than, lets say, sticking Sea Eagle or TIALD on the Blackburn Bucanneer is a bit off (the integration of TIALD on the Buc included hardware changes, including a new display on the backseat).
The photo bellow is from the 2006 NAO Major Projects Report, requirements (and funds) for CASOM (aka Storm Shadow), AAAW (aka Brimstone), CRV7, an LDP, Paveway, Alarm, BL755, a 1500l external fuel tank, etc. Those requirements were deleted because money (lack of).
Typhoon could have received a very robust atg capability from the start if the requirements had not been "postponed" (or if Tornado was not such a dam good platform...).
In the end Tornado bowed out and its real replacement was project Centurion (because it was vastly cheaper to stick atg munitions on T2/T3 Phoons than buying 4/6 sqns worth of new aircrafts).

Cheers
 

Attachments

  • 20241119_100002.jpg
    20241119_100002.jpg
    3.9 MB · Views: 44
Last edited:

Similar threads

Please donate to support the forum.

Back
Top Bottom