Eurofighter - Typhoon Fighter Aircraft

Video from the channel FootageDirect about Eurofighter Typhoon, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 51:34. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A television documentary filmed on the eve of the 1992 Farnborough Airshow about the European combat aircraft programme EFA, the future Eurofighter, at a time when it had not yet flown. It opens at the British Aerospace plant in Warton, where the second of seven prototypes was being assembled from sections manufactured in Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, and covers the programme's technical development: the EAP demonstrator, wind-tunnel testing, composite materials, the EJ200 engine, computer-controlled flight, the simulator, radar signature reduction and helmet-mounted displays.

The project was born around 1983 as a response to highly manoeuvrable Soviet fighters such as the MiG-29 and Su-27, in a scenario of war in Central Europe. France left the consortium after failing to secure leadership and went on its own with the Rafale. The end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union called the aircraft's necessity into question, and Germany announced in 1992 its intention to leave the programme once the development phase ended in 1999. The documentary also compares the EFA with other options on the market: the Saab Gripen, the Rafale, the F-22 and the Russian fighters that were beginning to be offered for export.

According to the documentary, the programme had been running for nearly ten years with more than £5 billion invested, and it was still seven years from entering service. The initial requirement of the four countries totalled 765 aircraft. The EAP, powered by two Tornado engines, flew for 195 hours and ended its flights in May 1991; the House of Commons calculated that it had saved the programme around £850 million in development costs. Carbon fibre and aluminium-lithium alloys would make the aircraft 30% lighter, and a fatigue life of 6,000 hours is cited, compared with 2,000 for the MiG-29. The simulator had accumulated more than 500 hours of virtual flight.