Eurofighter Typhoon: Four-Nation Work Share and a Deliberately Unstable Jet

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The Eurofighter Typhoon began in the late 1970s with clashing national needs: Britain's AST-403 concept for a low-level strike jet to replace the Jaguar, and West Germany's TKF-90 high-altitude interceptor aimed at Soviet bombers. France joined early but demanded design leadership, carrier capability and its own Snecma M88 engines, then left in the mid-1980s to build the Dassault Rafale. The UK, Germany, Italy and Spain pressed on, only to see the Soviet Union collapse. Chancellor Helmut Kohl campaigned on cancelling the jet, but withdrawal penalties written into the consortium contracts made staying in cheaper than leaving. Even the name was a fight, since the original Hawker Typhoon had attacked German targets in World War II.

The design places close-coupled canards ahead of a delta wing so the jet is aerodynamically unstable, held in line by a quadruplex digital fly-by-wire system that gives it rapid agility and carefree handling. About 82 percent of the airframe is composite, and the Typhoon can supercruise at up to Mach 1.5 without afterburners. Its pilots use the BAE Striker II helmet display and the Praetorian defensive aids suite, and the fleet is moving from the mechanically scanned CAPTOR radar to the ECRS AESA radar. Britain's National Audit Office put UK program costs at £37 billion in 2011, with deliveries 54 months late. Built as a dogfighter, the Typhoon first saw combat over Libya in 2011 dropping Paveway bombs.

• Under the work share deal, Spain builds every right wing, Italy every left wing, Germany the center fuselage, and the UK the front fuselage, canopy and tail.
• The four partner nations run four separate final assembly lines across Europe.
• Spitfire II was floated as a name before Typhoon was adopted, first for export aircraft.
• The P1EB package and Project Centurion added Storm Shadow, Brimstone and the ramjet-powered Meteor missile.
• Typhoons have flown NATO Baltic air policing, Saudi strikes over Yemen, and RAF missions shooting down Iranian drones.