Sure, you keep telling yourself that. The only modern fighter aircraft that have actually participated in something resembling a proper war are F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, A-10s, Tornados and Harriers. The rest was just extended target practice.
Eurofighter Typhoon - Updates and Discussions
- Thread starter Ashwin
- Start date
RAF drop 42 bombs and 10 cruise missiles in huge operation
RAF aircraft have carried out a major offensive in support of Iraqi ground troops in an operation lasting 10 days.
Kuwait Typhoon emerges
On 15 April 2021 Eurofighter published two imagines of what seems to be the first three two-seat Typhoons, destined for the al-Quwwat al-Jawwiya al-Kuwaitiya (Kuwait Air Force) on a Twitter page. The aircraft are lined up for some sort of display outside, but miss the installation of their Martin Baker Mk16 ejection seats. Other than that the jets seem complete and sport a one tone grey colour scheme, They do carry a tone down marked Kuwait Air Force crest and a full colour Kuwaiti flag on the tail. No serials are applied yet, it seems. These three should be aircraft KT001, KT002 and KT003. Time for a recap of the programme with some updates and new details.
In April 2016 Kuwait signed an $8.7 billion contract with Finmeccanica (now Leonardo) for the supply of 28 aircraft (including six two-seat trainers), with an associated training, logistics, and operational support package, including equipment and a suite of training devices, to allow the establishment of an operational conversion unit in Kuwait. The contract also included the construction of infrastructure at Al-Salem Air Base and a three-year package of initial support services (with an option for a further five years). Kuwait thereby became the eighth customer for the Eurofighter Typhoon.
The Eurofighter Typhoon final assymbly line at the Leonardo Aircraft Division factory at Torino-Caselle Nord (Italy) launched the final assembly of the first Kuwaiti Typhoon formally in October 2018. Back then the plan was delivery of the aircraft to start in 2020 and to be completed in 2023. The wordwide COVID pandemic was the cause for delays last year. The production and final assembly of the fighter jets suffered from those economic complications and even left Leonardo to admit that short-term cash flow 'slippages' hampered the programme.
Now the programme seems to get back on track again. The first seven Kuwaiti pilots graduated from their Aeronautica Militare (AM, Italian Air Force) flying training courses, on 5 July 2020. The experienced Kuwaiti pilots had undertaken some training with the AMI's Eurofighter F-2000 operational conversion unit (20° Gruppo of 4° Stormo) at Grosseto, but the graduation ceremony was held at Lecce/Galatina, home to the M346-equipped International Flying School/61° Stormo. These officers will now instruct other Kuwaiti pilots.
Kuwait’s 28 aircraft will be the most advanced examples of the Eurofighter Typhoon produced so far, and the first delivered to the new P3Eb standard. P3Eb provides a package of capabilities that build upon the Typhoon’s previous enhancement programmes, using the functional content of P3Ea as what Leonardo calls “a starting technical development baseline.”
P3Eb will be delivered in two phases. The KAF entry into service (EIS) standard includes the new E-scan radar (with an EIS capability), AIM-120 AMRAAM (up to C7), and a Meteor initial training capability, ballistic bombs (Mk 82, 83, and 84), the Sniper laser designator pod with downlink, the P5 ACMI pod (providing real-time training for air-to-air gunnery, IRIS-T, and AMRAAM C7), and VOR navigation capability.
Later, the KAF Enhanced standard will be introduced. This will introduce an upgraded E-scan radar, Meteor full capability, GBU-31 JDAM precision-guided bombs, Enhanced Sniper (full-range capability), and a P5 ACMI Pod Enhancement. The radar used by Kuwaiti Typhoons is the Captor-E to Radar One Plus standard. This also forms the basis of the four-nation (United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Germany) AESA radar development programme, with the same hardware and the same performance. The Captor-E radar provides significantly more power than most competing systems. The advanced antenna repositioner gives the Typhoon radar a field of regard (total area that can be captured by a movable sensor) of 200 degrees.
Kuwait’s Typhoons will be the first to use the Lockheed Martin Sniper advanced targeting pod, following the award of a direct commercial sale contract for eighteen Sniper advanced targeting pods, together with integration and logistics support, on 28 September 2016. The Sniper pod has recently been upgraded to include two-colour laser spot tracking, short-wave infrared, and advanced non-traditional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance modes.
Furthermore, the Kuwaiti aircraft will be capable of carrying the MBDA Storm Shadow cruise missile, providing a long-range stand-off capability that the US will not provide with the Super Hornet, due to missile technology control regime restrictions. Kuwait’s Typhoons are also due to be equipped to carry DRS-Cubic ACMI P5 combat training pods and will be fitted with an enhanced navigation aid with VOR.
A number of Italian test aircraft have been used to clear the Kuwaiti P3Eb standard, with instrumented series production aircraft (ISPA4) and instrumented production aircraft flying with Mk 82 500-pound bombs, Mk 83 1,000-pound bombs, and Mk 84 2,000-pound bombs. On 23 December 2020, Leonardo began flying ISPA6 on radar, avionics, and weapons integration test sorties.
On 15 April 2021 Eurofighter published two imagines of what seems to be the first three two-seat Typhoons, destined for the al-Quwwat al-Jawwiya al-Kuwaitiya (Kuwait Air Force) on a Twitter page. The aircraft are lined up for some sort of display outside, but miss the installation of their Martin Baker Mk16 ejection seats. Other than that the jets seem complete and sport a one tone grey colour scheme, They do carry a tone down marked Kuwait Air Force crest and a full colour Kuwaiti flag on the tail. No serials are applied yet, it seems. These three should be aircraft KT001, KT002 and KT003. Time for a recap of the programme with some updates and new details.
In April 2016 Kuwait signed an $8.7 billion contract with Finmeccanica (now Leonardo) for the supply of 28 aircraft (including six two-seat trainers), with an associated training, logistics, and operational support package, including equipment and a suite of training devices, to allow the establishment of an operational conversion unit in Kuwait. The contract also included the construction of infrastructure at Al-Salem Air Base and a three-year package of initial support services (with an option for a further five years). Kuwait thereby became the eighth customer for the Eurofighter Typhoon.
The Eurofighter Typhoon final assymbly line at the Leonardo Aircraft Division factory at Torino-Caselle Nord (Italy) launched the final assembly of the first Kuwaiti Typhoon formally in October 2018. Back then the plan was delivery of the aircraft to start in 2020 and to be completed in 2023. The wordwide COVID pandemic was the cause for delays last year. The production and final assembly of the fighter jets suffered from those economic complications and even left Leonardo to admit that short-term cash flow 'slippages' hampered the programme.
Now the programme seems to get back on track again. The first seven Kuwaiti pilots graduated from their Aeronautica Militare (AM, Italian Air Force) flying training courses, on 5 July 2020. The experienced Kuwaiti pilots had undertaken some training with the AMI's Eurofighter F-2000 operational conversion unit (20° Gruppo of 4° Stormo) at Grosseto, but the graduation ceremony was held at Lecce/Galatina, home to the M346-equipped International Flying School/61° Stormo. These officers will now instruct other Kuwaiti pilots.
Kuwait’s 28 aircraft will be the most advanced examples of the Eurofighter Typhoon produced so far, and the first delivered to the new P3Eb standard. P3Eb provides a package of capabilities that build upon the Typhoon’s previous enhancement programmes, using the functional content of P3Ea as what Leonardo calls “a starting technical development baseline.”
P3Eb will be delivered in two phases. The KAF entry into service (EIS) standard includes the new E-scan radar (with an EIS capability), AIM-120 AMRAAM (up to C7), and a Meteor initial training capability, ballistic bombs (Mk 82, 83, and 84), the Sniper laser designator pod with downlink, the P5 ACMI pod (providing real-time training for air-to-air gunnery, IRIS-T, and AMRAAM C7), and VOR navigation capability.
Later, the KAF Enhanced standard will be introduced. This will introduce an upgraded E-scan radar, Meteor full capability, GBU-31 JDAM precision-guided bombs, Enhanced Sniper (full-range capability), and a P5 ACMI Pod Enhancement. The radar used by Kuwaiti Typhoons is the Captor-E to Radar One Plus standard. This also forms the basis of the four-nation (United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Germany) AESA radar development programme, with the same hardware and the same performance. The Captor-E radar provides significantly more power than most competing systems. The advanced antenna repositioner gives the Typhoon radar a field of regard (total area that can be captured by a movable sensor) of 200 degrees.
Kuwait’s Typhoons will be the first to use the Lockheed Martin Sniper advanced targeting pod, following the award of a direct commercial sale contract for eighteen Sniper advanced targeting pods, together with integration and logistics support, on 28 September 2016. The Sniper pod has recently been upgraded to include two-colour laser spot tracking, short-wave infrared, and advanced non-traditional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance modes.
Furthermore, the Kuwaiti aircraft will be capable of carrying the MBDA Storm Shadow cruise missile, providing a long-range stand-off capability that the US will not provide with the Super Hornet, due to missile technology control regime restrictions. Kuwait’s Typhoons are also due to be equipped to carry DRS-Cubic ACMI P5 combat training pods and will be fitted with an enhanced navigation aid with VOR.
A number of Italian test aircraft have been used to clear the Kuwaiti P3Eb standard, with instrumented series production aircraft (ISPA4) and instrumented production aircraft flying with Mk 82 500-pound bombs, Mk 83 1,000-pound bombs, and Mk 84 2,000-pound bombs. On 23 December 2020, Leonardo began flying ISPA6 on radar, avionics, and weapons integration test sorties.
My prediction
www.strategicfront.org
I was too optimistic
Eurofighter Typhoon - Updates and Discussions
https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/07/20/indonesia-says-it-wants-to-buy-austrias-entire-typhoon-fighter-fleet/ MELBOURNE, Australia — Indonesia has expressed interest in acquiring Austria’s fleet of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets, in yet another surprise defense procurement...
www.strategicfront.org
Britain’s Long-awaited Radar Two Program Breaks Cover
by Jon Lake- September 14, 2020, 7:05 AM
The ECRS Mk 2 features a single-jointed, rotating barrel-type repositioner, as employed by the Leonardo ES-05 Raven radar for the Gripen E/F. (Photo: BAE Systems)
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sha...s-long-awaited-radar-two-program-breaks-cover
UK defense minister Jeremy Quin announced in early September that a £317 million ($409 million) contract had been signed covering the integration of the new ECRS Mk 2 active electronically scanned array (AESA, or E-Scan) radar on Royal Air Force Typhoons fighters. A test and evaluation contract for the “Radar Two” project had been widely expected to allow the development of the radar to be completed.
The UK has long resisted pressure to join the existing Typhoon AESA program, insisting that it needed a more advanced radar, with electronic attack (EA) and electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, in order to operate autonomously in the most challenging contested environments or to add value to a 4th/5th generation force mix.
In the wake of the contract announcement, more detailed information about the new radar emerged. ECRS Mk 2 has been developed by Italy's Leonardo group and will be integrated by BAE Systems, the UK’s prime contractor for the Typhoon.
Although designated as the ECRS (European Common Radar System) Mk 2, the new UK radar has little in common with previous AESA radars developed by the Euroradar consortium, despite sharing the same ECRS designation prefix. The ECRS Mk 0 AESA radar fitted to Kuwaiti and Qatari Typhoons, and the ECRS Mk 1 radar that is being developed for the German/Spanish retrofit program, are derivatives of the mechanically scanned (M-Scan) Captor-C, using the same back end but married to a new AESA array with a double swashplate repositioner. They are collectively known as Captor-E variants.
The ECRS Mk 2 radar does share a common interface with the platform and weapons system, via the German-supplied attack computer, and uses the same power generation and cooling, but from the power supply forward the new radar uses completely new hardware. ECRS Mk 2 has a new processor, a new receiver, a dedicated EW receiver and techniques generator, and a different repositioner that uses a single rotating joint rather than the double swashplate arrangement of Captor-E. The aircraft will feature a new radome to support the wider bandwidth that comes with ECRS Mk 2.
The Radar Two has significantly more transmit-receive elements than other radars, leading Leonardo to claim that it is the most capable AESA fighter radar in the world, while also allowing simultaneous wide-band electronic warfare operation. The ECRS Mk 2 radar makes use of both gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN) semi-conductors within its array, blending the strengths of the different technologies to cost-effectively provide a differentiating military capability.
ECRS Mk 2 is built on the lineage of the Advanced Radar Targeting System (ARTS) and Bright Adder technology demonstrators, and on the ES-05 Raven radar used in the Saab Gripen E/F, rather than on the original Captor radar and the AESA-equipped Captor-E.
Bright Adder was based on the ARTS concept, using a form factor suited to the Typhoon. It was intended to be better than the Typhoon’s existing air-to-air radar, while also offering electronic attack capabilities as well. Though built as a flyable asset, the Bright Adder radar was not flown and was instead tested in Leonardo’s rooftop lab at Crewe Toll in Edinburgh. However, it will now fly in a Typhoon as part of the ECRS Mk 2 test and evaluation (T&E) effort, with several test radars and the first three production systems. The first Radar Two will fly in a Typhoon in 2022, and the T&E fleet will build steadily from there, achieving IOC (initial operational capability) for the ECRS Mk 2 soon after 2025.
The initial plan is for all 40 of the UK’s Tranche 3 aircraft to be equipped with ECRS Mk.2 equipment, though there is an option to re-equip Tranche 2 Typhoons as well. Tranche 2 and Tranche 3 aircraft have the necessary “pre-mods” to allow ECRS Mk 2 retrofit. The new radar is also being offered to export customers, including Finland, where the Typhoon offer is based on the RAF aircraft standard, with Radar Two.
£317m contract to develop next generation radar for the Royal Air Force Typhoon
Wonder if this is the wideband transmit, X-band receive technology that's been in study for some time. Multi-band stand-off jamming.
@randomradio, @vstol Jockey, @STEPHEN COHEN, @Ashwin, @RISING SUN
£317m contract to develop next generation radar for the Royal Air Force Typhoon
www.leonardocompany.com
Wonder if this is the wideband transmit, X-band receive technology that's been in study for some time. Multi-band stand-off jamming.
@randomradio, @vstol Jockey, @STEPHEN COHEN, @Ashwin, @RISING SUN
What's that, "wideband transmit, X-band receive"?
Yeah, and? Just because the radar can do wideband doesn't mean the all-aspect jammers can't. What I don't understand about you is that you fail to realise that wideband jamming-able radars are a step up on 'normal' self-protection EW systems, all of which can do jamming. Just because Usain Bolt ran 100m in 9.58s that doesn't mean that he couldn't run it in 11s.
Airbus offers to assemble Eurofighter in Switzerland to win $6.5 bln deal -report
Airbus (AIR.PA) has offered to assemble Eurofighter aircraft in Switzerland if Bern picks it for a 6 billion Swiss franc ($6.5 billion) defence contract, a top salesman at the consortium told a Swiss Sunday newspaper.
Finland offered partner status in Eurofighter
Finland is being offered partner status in the Eurofighter programme as part of the consortium's bid for Finland's HX fighter procurement, BAE Systems representatives...
www.janes.com
German air force declares Meteor missile ready for Eurofighter fleet
The German air force recently completed flight tests for its newest air-to-air missile, the Meteor, and have deemed the weapon ready for use aboard the nation’s Eurofighter Typhoon fleet.
www.defensenews.com
UK to retire Tranche 1 Typhoons with more than half of airframe hours remaining
by Gareth JenningsThe UK's recently revealed plan to prematurely retire its Tranche 1 Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft will see the fleet axed with more than half of its airframe fatigue life remaining, the government said on 7 September.
Answering questions in the House of Commons, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence, James Heappey, said that the Tranche 1 Typhoons that were earmarked for early retirement in the Defence Command Paper published on 22 March would be retired with an average of nearly 60% of their airframe fatigue lives remaining.
“There are 30 Typhoon Tranche 1 aircraft in the sustainment fleet and the projected average flying hours for each of the aircraft, when they reach their respective out-of-service date, is 2,544.8 flying hours,” Heappey said.
With the Typhoon notionally rated to an airframe life of 6,000 hours, 2,544.8 hours represent just 42.4% of airframe use. With this figure being averaged out across the fleet, a number of the more recently delivered aircraft will have flown significantly fewer hours than this. Of the 53 Tranche 1 aircraft received by the Royal Air Force (RAF), 30 remain in the inventory. Of these, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) told Janes that 20 are in active service while the remaining 10 are in storage.
