Brimstone missile trials completed successfully as part of Eurofighter Typhoon enhancement programme Citat:
A series of live firings of the Brimstone precision strike missile from a Eurofighter Typhoon have been completed successfully, adding enhanced capability to the aircraft.
The trials, conducted from BAE Systems’ Military Air & Information at Warton, Lancashire, UK, form part of a programme of new enhancements which will be rolled out across the Royal Air Force (RAF), ensuring Typhoon remains at the cutting edge of combat capability.
Brimstone will provide Typhoon with a low collateral, pin-point accurate air-to-surface weapon, further enhancing the aircraft’s already combat-proven swing-role performance. Planning for the next stages of work on Brimstone - including evaluation by the RAF in mid-2018 - is now underway ahead of its entry into service.
Brimstone is part of the Phase 3 Enhancement (P3E) package which also includes mission system and sensor upgrades. P3E is the final part of Project Centurion – the programme to ensure a smooth transition of Tornado GR4 capabilities on to Typhoon for the RAF.
In total nine firings and nine jettison trials, which began in July, have been completed, with support from the UK Ministry of Defence, MBDA, QinetiQ, Eurofighter GmbH and the Eurofighter Partner Companies – Airbus and Leonardo.
The aim of the trials was to provide weapons integration clearance for operational use. They covered a range of specific release scenarios, testing at various heights, speeds, levels of G-force and in different positions on the aircraft wing and in the launcher. The nine firings have also been used to perform data analysis and models of the weapon’s performance. Further flight trials will take place in early 2018, followed by operational evaluation by the RAF.
Operational evaluation of the Phase 2 Enhancement (P2E) package with the with RAF’s 41(R) Squadron – the Test and Evaluation Squadron – at RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire, UK, is continuing and will include live firings ahead of roll out to the UK fleet. The P2E package includes MBDA’s Meteor Beyond Visual Range air-to-air missile and the Storm Shadow deep strike stand-off air-to-surface missile.
The Kuwait aircraft – The most advanced Eurofighter ever
Citat:Kuwait’s Eurofighter Typhoons will be the most advanced of the type produced so far, with a package of capabilities on top of the previous enhancement programmes such as the Captor-E E-Scan radar and several novelties in the weapon system that will make the Kuwait Air Force at the front-line of the fighter technology when the aircraft will enter into service.
The contract is a complex one and requires such capabilities to be delivered into two subsequent releases, the first to be part of the aircraft at its entry into service and the second 24 months after.
The capability packages granted to Kuwait will include the integration of Storm Shadow and Brimstone and other air-to-surface weapons. These features enrich the multi-role characteristics of the aircraft and enhance the weapon system in a role in which the aircraft is excelling since 2011 with the operations over Libya and now Syria and Iraq.
“Moreover this configuration foresees the integration of a new advanced laser designator pod (the Lockheed Martin Sniper) that will expand Eurofighter portfolio of cleared laser designator pods, the introduction of the DRS-Cubic ACMI P5 combat training pod, an enhanced navigation aid (VOR) and the E-Scan radar CAPTOR with its antenna repositioner.”
The Typhoon Captor-E provides significantly more power than most competing systems. Combined with the fighter's large nose aperture and the unique ability to move the radar antenna, the Typhoon has a field of view of 200 degrees and the flight tests are confirming the discriminating advantages this will bring.
“This new radar, developed and produced by the Euroradar consortium, which is led by Leonardo, underpins the Typhoon’s current and future capability evolution.
“As far as the overall package is concerned, today we are well into the development phase. The Avionic System design has been completed and we are currently designing and coding the software”.
Citat:The Typhoon is already equipped to send and receive data with the F-35s on Link 16, a NATO-standard datalink. But Link-16 uses an omnidirectional antenna that is not compatible with the radio – Harris's Multi-function Advanced Data Link (MADL) – that the F-35 uses to communicate with other F-35s while in stealth mode inside contested airspace.
But the Typhoon has already demonstrated the capability to transmit and receive data with the F-35 in training flights and exercises in the USA, says Air Vice-Marshall Gerry Mayhew, air officer commanding for the RAF’s No 1 Group.
“This is not something we’re dreaming of. This is something we’re doing,” Mayhew says. “We’re already operating fourth- and fifth-gen fighters in exercises in training. This is also using new systems as well as the Link 16 systems.”
Asked to elaborate on the new systems that allow the Typhoon to transmit and receive data with F-35s flying in communications stealth mode, Mayhew declined, saying he could not talk about the technology.
But the public record offers clues about the solution that is referred to by Mayhew. Last February, Northrop Grumman announced that the RAF held an event in the Mojave desert in California called Exercise High Rider.
The exercise included an demonstration called Babel Fish III. An F-35 transmitted data from MADL to a Northrop-designed airborne gateway system, which translated the message into a waveform that could be interpreted by the Link 16 radio on board an RAF GR.4 Tornado.
