Eurofighter Typhoon DA3

DA3 was the third of the seven Development Aircraft (DA) of the Eurofighter programme and the first of the two contributed by Italy, the other being DA7. It was built by Alenia Aeronautica at its Caselle plant near Turin and carried the military test serial MMX602. Under the programme's division of labour each prototype was given a field of work: DA3 was assigned the development of the weapon systems, while the German DA1 dealt with structure, engines and flight-control software and the British DA2 with the flight envelope.

Its most distinctive feature from the start was its powerplant. The first two prototypes, DA1 and DA2, had to fly with modified Turbo-Union RB199 engines inherited from the Tornado because the programme's definitive engine, the Eurojet EJ200, was not yet cleared for flight. DA3 was the first Eurofighter fitted from the outset with EJ200s, so its maiden flight on 4 June 1995 from Caselle, with test pilot Napoleone Bragagnolo at the controls and phase 1 flight-control software, was also the first flight of the engine that would power every production aircraft. From then on the aircraft received the successive versions of the engine: EJ200-01C units were installed in 1996, and in December of that year in-flight engine relight was tested; in spring 1998 it was upgraded to the EJ200-03A standard.

A second line of work covered external stores and the expansion of the envelope with them. On 5 December 1997 it made the first flight with two 1,000-litre underwing tanks, and in March 1999 it reached Mach 1.6 in that same two-tank configuration. In December 1999 it repeated Mach 1.6 carrying three 1,000-litre tanks. Weapon-release trials also began in 1999.

The task that most defined DA3 was the gun. On 31 March 2000 a modification programme began to upgrade the aircraft's cannon and ejection seat, and the first cannon firing took place on 13 March 2002; the first firing in flight came in March 2004, and from March 2005 air-to-air gunnery tests were carried out. According to programme documentation, DA3 was the only single-seat development aircraft to carry the Mauser BK-27 cannon and was used for firing clearances and weapon development; it is the prototype that conducted many of the firing trials of that gun.

In its final period the aircraft was used at Decimomannu, in Sardinia, for flutter tests until August 2005. From September of that year it flew trials with GBU-10 laser-guided bombs, and in early 2006 it carried out flight-performance measurements, such as the glide ratio, and releases of air-to-ground munitions.

Sources differ slightly on the end of its career: German documentation records its last flight on 7 February 2006, whereas other English-language sources refer to its retirement at the end of 2006 and note that its future had not yet been decided. DA3 was eventually preserved on display at the Leonardo factory museum in Caselle, at the same airfield from which it had first taken off, sharing with DA7 (MMX603), kept at the Italian Air Force Museum at Vigna di Valle, the legacy of the programme's two Italian prototypes.