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Eurofighter—Doing Very Well, Now Send More Cash
There are two sides to the Eurofighter story right now. On one hand, some excellent progress has been made establishing Europe's next-generation combat aircraft with the four partner air forces. In particular, the UK and Germany have made great strides toward putting their jets into meaningful service—at last. Furthermore, two RAF Eurofighters have just completed a thorough evaluation with the Republic of Singapore Air Force for its Next Fighter Replacement program. Other emerging export prospects (albeit it far from imminent) include Saudi Arabia, which has undertaken some preliminary discussions with BAE Systems.
Yet there is still a continuing wrangle in Britain over payment for the next steps in Eurofighter development, the Tranche 2 and 3 contracts. Without some rapid agreement on this matter the future operational capabilities of the Eurofighter will be threatened, while questions will continue to grow about the UK government's true commitment to its planned procurement of 232 aircraft.
RAF Typhoons are now wearing the badges of two units, No. 17 Sqn, the operational evaluation unit (OEU), and No. 29 Sqn, the operational conversion unit (OCU). Both squadrons are flying from a purpose-built facility at BAE Systems' Warton plant under the Eurofighter entry into service support program, the Contractor Service Support (CSS) agreement (known as 'Case White'). While establishing this level of flight ops has taken years beyond all original plans, the operational tempo that the Typhoons are now achieving has exceeded expectations.
The official in service date for Eurofighter in the UK (recorded as the day the first Typhoon T.Mk 1 trainer was accepted at Warton) was June 30, 2003. Under the 1998 CSS contract the OEU was to have started operations on July 1, 2002. In the event, the OEU did not make its first real-world flight until Dec. 22, 2003. Since then progress has been encouraging. By July 2004 over 250 sorties had been flown by the two RAF units, and training of the first eight pilots for the OCU was well under way. By early July 2004 there were nine Typhoon T.Mk 1s in RAF hands, plus a further five developmental aircraft flying with BAE Systems. The fifth and final Instrumented Production Aircraft—the first production single-seat aircraft (Typhoon F.Mk 2)—made its maiden flight on June 7 and is currently flying manufacturer's trials.
Without exception the crews that have flown the Typhoon express their delight with the aircraft, in English, German, Italian and Spanish. When the Typhoon received its official British service release in May 2004 it was accompanied by a QinetiQ report that warned of several technical flaws with the aircraft. While this added to Eurofighter's mounds of unfavourable press cuttings, the criticisms were largely outdated, misdirected and not the result of any kind of formal evaluation. One important technical point that is about to be resolved is the clearance of the final LCC 5 flight control system standard for Tranche 1 Block 2 Entry Into Service (EIS) aircraft. This delivers more autopilot modes and introduces the Automatic Low Speed Recovery System (ALRS) for the first time. This will be a further boost to operational flying.
The next issue that must be resolved is UK funding for Tranche 2. The UK has always liked to picture itself in the vanguard of support for Eurofighter but this is no longer the case. BAE Systems and the MoD are now in a stand-off where government agreement on the cost and capability of Tranche 2 (and late Tranche 1 aircraft) is being horse-traded against compensation on industry's problems with initial Tranche 1 deliveries. The problem arises from a fundamental lack of available government money for an obvious program milestone that should have been better planned for. The other three partners say they are ready to move on and if the UK does not get its house in order soon the delays will start to have a very harmful effect. Eurofighter is at Chalet A37-38 and OE9.
—Robert Hewson
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