Eurofighter Typhoon Tranche 2

Tranche 2 is the second of the three production batches into which the Eurofighter programme was organised, and the one that turned the Typhoon into a genuinely multirole fighter. Its contracts were closed in the last weeks of 2004: on 2 December the budget committee of the German Bundestag approved the purchase of a second batch for the Luftwaffe, and on 14 December the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency (NETMA) and Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH signed the contract covering the second tranche, worth about thirteen billion euros, of which the British share amounted to some four thousand three hundred million pounds. The United Kingdom was the last of the four partner nations to commit, on 15 December 2004, with a second order for 89 aircraft that completed the batch of 236 airframes.

That total was shared among the four partners along the programme's usual workshare key: 93 aircraft for the United Kingdom, 75 for Germany, 48 for Italy and 35 for Spain. The figure was later adjusted to 251 machines when some airframes originally attributed to Tranche 1 were reclassified. Unlike that first batch, conceived above all for air defence, Tranche 2 had the air-to-ground mission written into its terms from the start: the contract covered both the production of the aircraft and the development of the extended strike capability, including the integration of the precision weapons that role demanded.

The essential difference from Tranche 1 lies not in the airframe, which is almost identical, but in the electronics. To head off equipment obsolescence and widen the computing power available, a new architecture based on PowerPC processors replaced the Motorola 68020 devices of the first batch, alongside improved CAPTOR radar software, a defensive aids subsystem hardened against electronic warfare and a modest increase in internal fuel. The first series aircraft of the batch, built to the Block 8 standard, initially flew with software re-hosted from Tranche 1 on the new hardware; from 2011 a rewritten package was introduced that allowed the architecture to be properly exploited, and the final software release of that development line became available in late 2012.

The flight test campaign rested on two instrumented aircraft. IPA6 (BS031), a British single-seater with a Tranche 1 airframe fitted with the complete Tranche 2 mission computer suite and avionics, flew from Warton on 1 November 2007; the first Tranche 2 standard EJ200 engine had flown shortly before aboard IPA2 in Italy, on 14 September. IPA7, allocated to Germany, was the first aircraft to represent the full Tranche 2 build standard and made its maiden flight from the Manching airfield on 16 January 2008. Assembly of the first production aircraft of the batch had begun at the BAE Systems plant in Samlesbury on 17 November 2005, and the first to be handed over, BS037, was destined for the Royal Air Force.

Block 8 type acceptance was agreed between Eurofighter and NETMA on 12 September 2008, formally clearing the way for deliveries to the air forces; earlier that year, on 20 March, GT015 — the last of the 144 Tranche 1 aircraft — had been delivered to the German Air Force. Deliveries of the second batch began in the summer of 2008, with the RAF and its Coningsby base as the first recipient, and continued through the following years into the middle of the next decade. Successive blocks were distinguished within the batch itself: the earliest aircraft left the line with baseline multirole software, while later ones, from around 2010, added dedicated air-to-ground radar modes and the integration of new weapons.

Strike capability arrived in stages through the enhancement packages. P1Ea (SRP10) entered service in the first quarter of 2013 and cleared the Paveway IV bomb, the EGBU-16 and the gun against surface targets; P1Eb (SRP12) added full integration of GPS-guided bombs — GBU-10 and GBU-16 Paveway II, Paveway IV — and a new real-time operating system allowing several targets to be engaged at once. By July 2014 a dozen RAF Tranche 2 Typhoons had been brought up to the P1E standard. The P2E package followed, with the Meteor air-to-air missile and the Storm Shadow cruise missile, whose firing trials were completed by early 2016, and then P3E with Brimstone, first fired in July 2017.

Twenty years after it was ordered, Tranche 2 still makes up the bulk of the European Typhoon fleets. Germany bought 143 aircraft in all, 79 of them from this batch, and plans to upgrade 110 of its Tranche 2 and 3 machines. The United Kingdom, which has retired 26 of its 30 Tranche 1 Typhoons and expects the remaining four to follow by 2027, intends to keep its Tranche 2 and 3 aircraft in service at least until 2040, by which time the next-generation Tempest should be available.