The history of the Eurofighter Typhoon and the numbers that summarize its current situation

On March 27, 1994, the first Eurofighter Typhoon, DA1, made its first takeoff at the MBB facility in Manching, Germany.

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The development of this advanced fighter aircraft was neither easy nor quick. The Agile Combat Aircraft (ACA) program for its development was presented in 1982, with the participation of the three countries that had already participated in the development of the first European combat aircraft, the Panavia Tornado: Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Spain joined the program in 1985 and the ACA was renamed European Fighter Aircraft (EFA). The aeronautical companies that participated in its development British Aerospace (United Kingdom, 37%), DASA (Germany, 29%), Aeritalia (Italy, 19.5%) and CASA (Spain, 14%) .

The plane ended up being called Eurofighter Typhoon, and after that first flight in 1994, it took nine years to become active: the first production aircraft was received by the German Luftwaffe on April 8, 2003. To give us an idea, four years passed from the first flight of the F-15 and F-16 until their entry into service, and five years in the case of the F/A-18. The F-35 also took nine years to enter service from its first flight (the first F-35s, of the F-35B variant, were received by the Marines in 2015).

With 680 aircraft delivered or ordered, the Eurofighter has not been a sales successif we compare them with aircraft such as the F-16 (more than 4,600 units), the F-15 (about 1,200), the F/A-18 (more than 2,000, including the Super Hornet) and even the F-35 (Lockheed has already built more than 1,000). Three decades later, the European aircraft is still far from reaching even the 977 units sold of the Panavia Tornado. The Eurofighter was clearly harmed by the delay in its development, reaching the market when there were only three years left before the appearance of the F-35, but it ended up being an excellent aircraft with great maneuverability and an outstanding push.

Today, the Eurofighter is operated by nine air forces: those of Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Austria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. The Eurofighter fleets of these nine countries are as follows:

• Germany: 141 aircraft in service, 38 pending delivery.
• United Kingdom: 102 aircraft in service.
• Italy: 94 aircraft in service.
• Spain: 69 aircraft in service, 45 pending delivery.
• Austria: 15 aircraft in service, 3 pending delivery.
• Saudi Arabia: 71 aircraft in service.
• Kuwait: 15 aircraft in service, 13 pending delivery.
• Oman: 12 aircraft in service.
• Qatar: 10 aircraft in service, 14 pending delivery.

In addition, there are four countries that could be considering their purchase, in some cases as second-hand aircraft: Colombia (which is looking to replace its old IAI Kfir), Bangladesh, Serbia and Ukraine. The Eurofighter was also a candidate to be part of the air forces of six other countries: Belgium, South Korea, Denmark, Finland, Singapore and Switzerland. In almost every case, it lost to the F-35.

The Eurofighter program also offered its aircraft unsuccessfully to other countries: Australia, Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Netherlands and Poland. Most of them opted for the F-35. In fact, today, of the four countries that are part of the Eurofighter program, Spain is the only one that has not decided to buy the F-35, at least for now (its Navy has no other option). option to replace your Harrier II).

The Eurofighter fleet exceeded 500,000 flight hours in 2018. Today, the four countries involved in the program share their participation as follows: United Kingdom 33%, Germany 33%, Italy 21% and Spain 13%. The program has the contribution of 400 European companies and around 88,000 people work in it: 25,000 in Germany, 22,000 in Spain, 21,000 in Italy and 20,800 in the United Kingdom.

The Eurofighter has already been tested in combat in Libya (by Italy and the United Kingdom), Syria (by Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom) and Yemen strong> (by Saudi Arabia), in all these cases in attack missions. At the moment, there is no evidence that this aircraft has participated in any aerial combat, although aircraft from several NATO countries have participated in interception flights of Russian aircraft during Baltic Air Police missions in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

The Tranche 4 variant of the Eurofighter is currently in development, with a new ESCAN Mk1 electronically scanned array radar with greater range and better simultaneous tracking of targets at short and long range, a DASS protection system (which detects threats and activates countermeasures automatically) and improvements in weapons. The two new batches of aircraft ordered by Germany (38) and Spain (45) will be of this variant.

Finally, so far eight Eurofighters have been destroyed in eight accidents, killing a total of six pilots. Until now, the country that has lost the most aircraft has been Spain, with four in total, including the Spanish DA-6 two-seat prototype. In these accidents of Spanish Eurofighters two Spanish pilots died, Captain Fernando Lluna Carrascosa (June 9, 2014) and Captain Borja Aybar García (October 12, 2017), and one pilot Saudi (August 24, 2010), who was flying as co-pilot in a two-seat Eurofighter.

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Main photo: Ejército del Aire.