Eurofighter

[AlbertoRJ]

Typhoon, understanding the Tranches and Blocks

Updated: January 2011

When you read about the Eurofighter Typhoon you will read about Tranches, Blocks, Phase Enhancements, Change Proposals but what does it all mean?

To understand the Typhoon programme you have to first look at a brief history of Typhoon.

History

In 1979 British Aerospace and Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm produced a proposal to meet the needs of both the British RAF and West German Luftwaffe for a Cold War air supremacy fighter.

Between 1979 and 1986 (when the first prototype took to the air) the partner nations tried to reach agreement over specification, requirements and how to approach the project. This saw the name of the project change names from European Combat Fighter to European Combat Aircraft to Agile Combat Aircraft to Future European Fighter Aircraft to finally being called European Fighter Aircraft.

The programme would see the Italians along with the Spanish join and the French join then leave, twice!

The 1990s saw arguments, politics and negotiation around the radar supplier and how the work should be shared between the four countries. With the Berlin Wall coming down, the end of the Cold War and the scaling back of defence budgets the partner nations reduced the number of aircraft they would commit to.

The Germans would make the biggest cut, reducing the number from 250 down to 140 before raising it to 180 after lengthy negotiation to limit the associated impact to their share of the industrial contracts to build the aircraft.

Further delays to the project would occur in the late 90s when the Germans still struggling with the cost of the reunification would delay making their payment for the construction stage phase, putting back the project by a year.

Type acceptance for Typhoon finally came on 30th June 2003 four year after originally planned.

The first delivery was made to the German Luftwaffe on 4th August 2003.

In 2003, Austria became the first export customer for Eurofighter with an order for 15 Typhoons. Delivery began in July 2007 and the first operational air policing missions began in June 2008. The final Typhoon was delivered in September 2009.

Saudi Arabia became the seconds export custom in September 2009 with an order for 72 Typhoons. 24 of these will be diverted from the RAF’s Tranche 2 production and the other 48 will be locally assembled. The first aircraft was delivered in June 2009.

Production is currently at 50 Typhoons a year and the 250th Typhoon was delivered to the Italian Air Force in December 2010.

Tranches

With a number of different nations involved in a project as large as this, all with an equal say there was always going to be disagreement, delays and a lot of politics. In attempt to make reaching agreement easier Typhoon would be produced in three tranches.

Each tranche is a separate contract between the partner nations and Eurofighter GmbH for an agreed number of aircraft. This would allow the partner nations the flexibility to change the number of aircraft they order over the construction period but at the cost of having to pay compensation to Eurofighter GmbH if reducing the number to assure construction and development continues without an increase to the unit price for the other partner nations.

Blocks

Where the tranche is a financial division, the block is a level of capability. With each new block new capabilities are introduced. The block approach is a common method used for military aircraft to roll out hardware upgrade, software upgrade, new hardware and / or structure change.

Typhoon was originally planned to have three blocks per tranche (with Tranche 3 containing Block 20, Block 25 and an option for another block). Each block was to build on the previous one with Tranche 1 covering air-to-air capabilities, Tranche 2 to introduce new weapons such as the Meteor BVR missile and Tranche 3 for future capabilities such as the AESA radar and thrust vectoring.

Enhanced Operational Capability 1 & 2 (EOC-1 & EOC-2)

The development plan was at Block 5 (the final block in Tranche 1) Typhoon would be at Full Operational Capability (FOC). By Block 10 (the penultimate block in Tranche 2) it would be Enhanced Operational Capability 1 (EOC-1) and Block 15 (the final block in Tranche 2) it would be EOC-2. The development plan for Block 20 / Block 25 in Tranche 3 was to be left open.

The plan was drawn up in the Cold War when Typhoon was intended to be used as an air supremacy fighter operating over Western Europe fighting against Soviet MiGs and Sukhois. With the fall of the Soviet Union this threat was no longer present and new requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan had replaced it which needed an air-to-ground capability.

The defence budgets for the partner nations were still under pressure and justifying all three tranches of Typhoons for air defence was a difficult sell, particularly for the RAF which had plans for 7 squadrons of Typhoons.
Whilst the three tranches are financial divisions it also allows specification change to the aircraft from the framework laid out at the start. This would allow new features to be added or deleted as required even at an individual nation level.

Change Proposal 210 (CP-210)

In 2007, the partner nations responded to these two problems with Change Proposal 210 which approved changes to Typhoon to give it an air-to-ground capability. This would change Typhoon from an air supremacy fighter to a swing-role fighter capable of performing both the air-to-air role and air-to-ground role.

CP-210 will be introduced in Tranche 2 and will be retro fitted to Tranche 1 aircraft.

Change Proposal 193 (CP-193)

The RAF with Tornado GR4s deployed to Iraq and Harriers deployed to Afghanistan needed Typhoon to have an air-to-ground capability before Tranche 2 started delivery with CP-210. In July 2006, under CP-193 an “austere” air-to-ground capability was rapidly developed and deployed to Trance 1 Block 5 Typhoons, referred to as Typhoon FGR4 by the RAF. The austere support provided integration of Litening III, the chosen Laser Designator Pod, and laser guide munitions in the form of Paveway II / Enhanced Paveway II.

The first Paveway II was dropped on 12th November 2007 by a combined BAE and RAF test team

ing to the Typhoon being declared multi role capable on 7th July 2008.

This has created a strange situation where Tranche 1 Block 5 aircraft have both air-to-air and limited air-to-ground capability whilst newer Tranche 2 Block 8 aircraft with over 400 improvements only have air-to-air capability.

The crux of the problem is software. The modification to the Typhoons software made by CP-193 was outside the development path. If they continued with two development paths (one with CP-193 for the RAF and one without for the other nations) you would need to develop and flight test both versions of the software with the RAF picking up the bill for the duplication of work.

By getting all nations to agree to include air-to-ground capability (CP-210) the RAF and Eurofighter GmbH had managed to bring this software modification into the main development path of the software but not soon enough to have it include in Block 8.

Phase 1 Enhancements (P1E) Phase 2 Enhancements (P2E)

With the change to a swing-role fighter the development plan defined in EOC-1 and EOC-2 no longer matched where the development of the aircraft was heading. To this end, both were replaced with Phase 1 Enhancement (P1E) and Phase 2 Enhancement (P2E) respectively.

P1E was signed off in 2007 and contains the CP-210 modification. Flight testing has begun on P1E and it is scheduled to reach service release in 2011.

P2E was very short lived and has now been abandoned and in favour of individual modifications similar to the method used for CP-193 and CP-210. This will allow more granular approach and avoid having to get agreement from all partner nations for a large package of changes.

Software Releases – SRPs

Once a Typhoon has reached P1E standard it will be running software release SRP 10; providing initial Paveway IV capability. Further capability will be released by later versions of the software.

SRP12 will add full integration of Paveway IV and the ability to attack multiple ground targets with a single attack run. SRP12 is expected to be release in 2012.

SRP14 will further increase the available weapons with Storm Shadow, Brimstone and initial Meteor capability expected.

SRP16 is expected to delivery full Meteor capability.

SRP18 is expected to integrate the AESA radar.

Less Blocks

With features being employed as individually the need for a block with a defined capability no longer existed. Tranche 2 Block 8 / 8B (the current production level) will be the last defined block.

The RAF has committed to have a standardised fleet and the Tranche 1 Typhoons are undergoing R2 upgrades to retrofit them to the latest standard (Block 5). The process takes 7 months for Block 2 aircraft and 12 months for Block 1 aircraft and the halfway point was passed in early June 2010 with 22 of the 43 aircraft complete.

All Tranche 1 aircraft will be upgraded to Tranche 1 Block 5 with P1E.

All Tranche 2 aircraft will be Block 8 with P1E.

This will give all the aircraft full air-to-air capability, full air-to-ground capability and the ability to perform both these roles simultaneously.

There will be no upgrades from Tranche 1 to Tranche 2 due to the physical differences between the two builds.

Tranche 3

With pressure increasing on defence budgets, especially for the British MoD who had a 36 billion pound funding black hole, Tranche 3 was under a very real threat of being cancelled.

The partner nations, in particular Germany, applied pressure on the British Government to sign the contract but the British insisted that costs must be reduced before they would do that.

To help the situation the tranche was broken into two parts, Tranche 3A and 3B.

A break through was finally made. The British would take their full allocation of 40 Tranche 3A Typhoons in exchange for 900 million pounds worth of savings achieved from reductions to the support contracts by BAE, Rolls-Royce and other partners.

Tranche 3A is due to start being delivered in 2013 and completing in 2016. The exact specification of Tranche 3A isn’t known at the time of writing as it is still being negotiated (the Tranche 3A contract signed only agrees to the production of a Tranche 3A not the capability of those aircraft) but it is expected they will be based on Tranche 2 with phased upgrades being included from 2014.

The British MoD has stated that with the signing of the contract for the production of Trance 3A the programme had reached the financial ceiling agreed in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and therefore had no further obligation to purchase their allocation of Tranche 3B Typhoons. Eurofighter GmbH at the time said this would be a matter for the partner nations to discuss and May 2010 submitted a proposal to the partner nations for the 124 Tranche 3B Typhoons. Eurofighter GmbH hope to have a decision by 2012 allowing them to keep production going.

If the partner nations do not take their allocation the future of Trance 3B looks bleak. The British haven’t totally ruled out making further purchases of Typhoons, instead saying they are unlikely to do so but reserve the right. The Italian Defence Minister said in July 2010 that they would be cutting their order by 25 aircraft, representing the Italians allocation of Tranche 3B aircraft.

Without Tranche 3B to keep the production lines open time is short for Eurofighter GmbH to attract export customers and the they are aware of this. BAE Systems have said they have forecast the Tranche 3B not being signed on time in their latest financial projection and as part of the Eurofighter consortium they expect to sign an export agreement between the UK and Oman within a year. The Eurofighter consortium is also competing for orders from India and Japan; although the Japanese have indicated they prefer to purchase more of the locally constructed F-2 aircraft based on the F-16 after failing to get the US to agree to sell them the F-22 Raptor.

Future Upgrades

An important part of attracting export customers is to adopt cutting edge technology into Typhoon.

AESA (Advanced Electronically Scanned Array) Radar

The CAPTOR-M radar in Typhoon is a mechanical radar that physically moves to scan (M-SCAN). Electronically scanning (E-SCAN) radars are rapidly improving and appears to be the future of radar design.

Tranche 3A aircraft have both the structural, power and cooling requirements to support its addition. Tranche 2 aircraft only have the structural requirements meaning that a retrofit program would be needed to support its addition.

Eurofighter Development Aircraft 5 (DA5) has already flown with an AESA radar in May 2007; using the AESA front end and the CAPTOR-M back end and referred to as CAESAR. Full scale development of the AESA radar has begun and the in service date is 2015 for both partner nations and export customers. The radar is being produced by Euroradar is a multi-national consortium led by SELEX Galileo. SELEX Galileo are currently developing the AESA radar for the Saab Gripen NG.

Separate to this development program the UK have funded a technology demonstrator program under the name Bright Adder. It will also be in partnership with SELEX Galileo and will concentrate on the UK’s requirements for an AESA radar system such as the electronic attack feature that is currently provided by the Alarm missile on the Tornado GR4. When both the GR4 and the Alarm have been withdrawn from service the UK needs the Typhoon to have the capabilities to carry out the missions that both these currently perform.

Conformal Fuel Tanks (CFT)

Like other fighter aircraft Typhoon is capable of using external (drop) tanks to increase its fuel capacity. These tanks can be fitted to the three wet points located on the fuselage centre point and the middle point on both wings. The addition of these tanks do bring a number of drawbacks. The loss of the two wing points means less points to attach ordinance and the centre point is also used to attach a targeting pod. The tanks also increase drag; although Typhoon is still capable of going supersonic with all three tanks fitted (tested to Mach 1.6 with three 1000 litre tanks).

Conformal Fuel Tanks would offer a solution to this problem with two semi-permanent tanks grafted onto the fuselage, each offering 1500 litres of fuel, without the loss of any points and reduced levels of drag. You will have seen them used on the F-15E Strike Eagle and starting to be seen more commonly on F-16s.

At present only Britain has shown interest in having CFTs. BAE have tested a scale model in a wind tunnel and are working on development with GKN Engage.

3D Thrust Vectoring Control (TVC)

Thrust Vectoring Control allows the nozzle on the engine to be deflected to enhance the agility of the fighter. With 3D TVC the nozzles are able to move up, down, left and right or a combination e.g. up and left.

No partner nation has expressed an interested in having TVC. Eurojet, the consortium of companies that produces the engines for Typhoon, is hoping to attract support for TVC by concentrating on the benefits provided above the enhanced agility.

Eurojet has said TVC would decrease fuel burn, increase the life of hot running components and reduce take off distance (particularly useful in ‘hot and high’ environments).

http://www.fast-air.co.uk/typhoon-block ... e-summary/

[Carlos Mathias]

Eurojet has said TVC would decrease fuel burn, increase the life of hot running components and reduce take off distance (particularly useful in ‘hot and high’ environments).

Mas num era só palhaçada russa para shows aéreos????????

[AlbertoRJ]

O que chama a atenção:

This has created a strange situation where Tranche 1 Block 5 aircraft have both air-to-air and limited air-to-ground capability whilst newer Tranche 2 Block 8 aircraft with over 400 improvements only have air-to-air capability.

[]'s

[Carlos Lima]

O que chama a atenção:

This has created a strange situation where Tranche 1 Block 5 aircraft have both air-to-air and limited air-to-ground capability whilst newer Tranche 2 Block 8 aircraft with over 400 improvements only have air-to-air capability.

[]'s

Consequência de falta de $$$$$$ para o programa de modo geral e frota cara de manter fazem. Ou a encomenda de quantidades é cumprida ou os updates das unidades existentes é levado em conta para criar uma frota padrão.

Um problema sério que isso pode causar é que dependendo desse "gap" isso pode tornar o upgrade das aeronaves antigas anti-economico (como aconteceu por um tempo com os Rafale F1).



[]s
CB_Lima

[Jacobs]

MEUS DEUS mas que colcha de retalhos dos infernos ficou esse eurofighter ein!

[Penguin]

[Gerson Victorio]

Santiago,

na boa e sem stress....que coisa horrorosa essa entrada de ar do EF!!!

poderiam ter feito algo semelhante ao J-10B

[soultrain]

Isso é entrada de ar de MACHO, dá até a noção que tem pelos nas narinas e aquele ar de mete medo, ninguem o quer ver pelo espelho

[Penguin]

Isso é entrada de ar de MACHO, dá até a noção que tem pelos nas narinas e aquele ar de mete medo, ninguem o quer ver pelo espelho

[Gerson Victorio]

Até os chinas reprojetaram pra melhor...

[Penguin]

RAF Typhoon takes off for Tiji with four Enhanced Paveway II 1000lb bombs
http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/archive/1000 ... s-26052011

Royal Air Force mission struck a military complex in Tiji, Libya on Wednesday (25 May). One Tornado GR4 and one Typhoon FGR4 struck the facility with nine bombs. In a demonstration of the flexibility of the RAF's combination of Tornado and Typhoon, the mission was originally tasked to strike eight points.



A ninth was added based on information received during the mission. The Typhoon dropped four Enhanced Paveway II bombs, the first time it has done that operationally, while the Tornado used five Paveway IV bombs, again a first for that aircraft.

Both weapon types have both laser and GPS guidance for accuracy. All nine struck their intended target points on a Qadhafi regime storage facility. The strikes mean that RAF aircraft have struck 17 targets in deliberate operations in the past 36 hours, all of them direct hits.



At the same time, the RAF has maintained its commitment to dynamic targeting missions. In that role they have destroyed Qadhafi regime artillery threatening Misurata. The complementary capabilities of the 1000lb Enhanced Paveway II and 500lb Paveway IV ensured that the storage facility was completely destroyed.

Pictures:

RAF Typhoon takes off for Tripoli with four Enhanced Paveway II 1000lb bombs.

An image prepared by the RAF Tactical Imagery Intelligence Wing shows the damage to a storage facility in Tiji.

[Penguin]

Eurofighter Typhoon Successfully Adds More Air-to-Ground Capabilities


(Source: Eurofighter GmbH; issued April 11, 2011)



The Eurofighter’s air-to-ground capabilities were further improved last week when partner company Cassidian Spain achieved the first EGBU-16 precision-guided munition avionic release.

This success comes immediately after the first successful Paveway IV release carried out during February in the UK. These trials saw both bomb types being successfully released from Eurofighter aircraft and focused on the functional integration into the weapon system.

The EGBU-16 is the selected dual mode precision guided munition for Germany, Spain and Italy whereas the Paveway IV precision-guided bomb is the choice for the UK.

Included in the broad-ranging Phase 1 Enhancement (P1E) programme, both weapons improve the all weather precision attack capability on the Typhoon.

The Typhoon aircraft has been autonomously air-to-ground capable since 2008 when the RAF successfully integrated the Paveway laser guided bombs with the Litening III laser designation pod on to its Typhoon fleet.

Demonstrating an unrivalled precision, the combination of weapons has been tested during several exercises both in the UK and abroad, confirming the built-in multi-role capability of the Typhoon.

[Penguin]

Ares
A Defense Technology Blog

Typhoon Paveway IV Capability Nears; Paveway IV+ Too
Posted by Robert Wall at 3/7/2011 5:55 AM CST

RAF officials have had high words of praise for the Paveway 4 and its use in Afghanistan. So far, however, those operations have only been conducted with Tornado GR4s.

Now, efforts are advancing to complete the integration also on the Eurofighter Typhoon. Avionics release was recently granted, and now the first release of the bomb from a Typhoon using that software package was completed at the Aberporth Range, Wales, BAE Systems says.


(Photo: BAE Systems)

The goal is to have the weapon trials completed by year end. BAE Systems says the weapon will be ready for operational evaluation early next year.

There are already follow-on developments being planned (subscription), which we detail in the latest issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology. Those efforts include a low-year warhead and an improved penetrator. The ability to upgrade the seeker to allow moving targets to be attacked is also under study by Raytheon.

[Penguin]

The Eurofighter Typhoon weapon fold out



http://www.eurofighter.com/fileadmin/we ... ishWEB.pdf

[Penguin]

Muito legal...

Technical Guide



http://www.eurofighter.com/fileadmin/we ... ideENG.pdf