Eurofighter Typhoon IPA4

IPA4 is the single-seater built by EADS in Spain. Its first flight, on 27 February 2004, was flown by Alfonso de Castro. In December 2004 it flew to the Swedish range at Vidsel for cold weather trials, which were completed on 8 March 2005; because conditions were not always cold enough, unplanned taxi trials on snow-covered and icy runways were added. It then moved to Moron for hot weather trials in the summer of 2005, and MIDS testing alongside production Typhoons was carried out there with network-enabled operations in mind. For that purpose the aircraft was upgraded to block 2B and fitted with the PIRATE sensor and the DASS. In 2006 electromagnetic compatibility, flutter and vibration trials were flown with the GBU-16, and Meteor programme flights followed in 2007. On 31 March 2009 IPA4 fired an AMRAAM at a Mirach target drone using cueing data transmitted by IPA5 over MIDS. The aircraft was upgraded to Tranche 2 standard in mid-2009. It was used for environmental and communications systems testing, MIDS and Meteor work, and from late 2012 it was dedicated to software validation. Together with IPA7 it closed the Phase 1 Enhancement flight test campaign on 28 October 2013.