Eurofighter Typhoon DA5

DA5 was the second of the two development aircraft (DA) that Germany contributed to the Eurofighter programme and the sixth of the seven prototypes to fly. Built by EADS Deutschland at Manching in Bavaria, it carried the German military serial 98+30 and made its maiden flight on 24 February 1997 with test pilot Wolfgang Schirdewahn at the controls. Whereas DA1 had been used to open the basic flight envelope and to prove the airframe and the flight control system, DA5 was built for a very specific job: it was the first Eurofighter fitted with the ECR-90 radar (later renamed CAPTOR) and also the first to fly with the full avionics suite. In the division of labour among the prototypes, it shared with the British two-seat DA4 the development of the radar and avionics, with a later upgrade to the Phase 2 software standard, while other sources also describe it as the single-seat aircraft assigned to weapons trials.

The test campaign got under way quickly. In June 1997, barely four months after the first flight, the aircraft received a radar software upgrade to the DS-C1 standard and was re-engined with Eurojet EJ200-03A turbofans. Trials with radar-absorbent material applied to the airframe followed. In May 1998 DA5 flew a display at the Berlin air show that included rolls at high angles of attack, and in June of that year it became the first Eurofighter to be evaluated by a potential export customer: the Royal Norwegian Air Force tested it at Rygge air base, south of Oslo, and on 15 December 1998 a Norwegian test pilot flew the aircraft. By then the programme's test fleet had logged some 750 flights and 630 flying hours.

On 1 April 1999 DA5 flew for the first time with the Phase 2B1 software standard, which introduced autopilot and autothrottle functions; that same spring, together with DA4, it began flying with the production version of the ECR-90 radar. On 18 May 1999 it fell to DA5 to complete the 1,000th test flight of the whole Eurofighter prototype fleet. In mid-1999 radar trials were flown against four simulated targets, in February 2000 icing trials were carried out, and by mid-2000 the aircraft had explored 90 per cent of the planned flight envelope, routinely flying in supercruise, firing air-to-air missiles and demonstrating high sortie rates and agility. On 29 March 2001 the radar trials were completed, having culminated in tests against twenty targets at a time, and in May 2001 the integration of the AMRAAM and AIM-9L missiles was finished.

In spring 2003 the avionics of DA5 were brought up to production standard, and in May 2004 it made the first flight with a live IRIS-T missile, followed by the first flight with six fully integrated AMRAAMs, including a simulated missile engagement. The aircraft was later upgraded to Tranche 2 standard, which kept it useful as a testbed at a time when the first production aircraft were already in service. Its last major contribution to the programme came on 8 May 2007, when it became the first Typhoon to fly with the CAESAR radar (CAPTOR Active Electronically Scanned Array Radar), the active electronically scanned array demonstrator from which the aircraft's new-generation radar would be derived.

DA5 was withdrawn from use on 30 October 2007. Since then it has had a second life as an exhibit: it appeared briefly at the ILA air shows in Berlin in 2010 and 2012 wearing the fictitious serials 31+30 and 30+40, and was then displayed until 2024 as a gate guardian at the General Steinhoff barracks, carrying the serial 20+12.