Douglas Barrie/WARTON
THE FIRST two-seat Eurofighter EF2000, is expected to be flown by the end of July, with senior management on the project increasingly confident that the technical difficulties affecting the project are now under control.
This clears the way for the four partner governments, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, to commit to the production phase. Go-ahead for production investment is intended by the end of this year. Senior government and military are finalising the industry price and workshare package submitted to the NATO Eurofighter Tornado Management Agency in March.
Senior British Aerospace and GEC management, along with high-ranking Royal Air Force officers, have been lobbying the Government to make a statement in Parliament, effectively committing to the production phase, before the end of July.
A UK commitment to the production phase would give an incentive to the other three nations to push ahead. With Germany re-examining near-term budgetary commitments, UK industrialists are keen to extract a firm commitment from Bonn on the EF2000.
Development problems with the digital flight-control system (FCS) and performance concerns resulting from radar/radome compatibility issues have dogged the project.
Bob Smith, Eurofighter 2000 operations director, admits that, as far as the FCS is concerned,"-we were unhappy about the rate of progress". Development problems with the FCS repeatedly delayed the programme.
The problems with the FCS caused friction between the UK and Germany, with GEC and Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA), the two key companies working on the FCS, blaming each other.
Steve Marsh, assistant project director at Eurofighter, says that the FCS "-started out as a procurement from DASA to GEC. This wasn't an ideal way to do it."
Marsh says that, since a joint venture between British Aerospace, DASA and GEC has taken over FCS development, the development programme has improved.
DA 6, being built by Spain's CASA, will be fitted with the latest version of the digital FCS software, Release 2A.
This introduces subsonic carefree manoeuvring, and allows for expansion of the flight envelope to high angles of attack. BAe's DA2 is expected to be flown at Mach 2 within its next five to six flights.
Problems over radar/radome compatibility also appear to have been resolved by changing the polarisation of the radome. Trials of the revised configuration have been successfully carried out on a BAC One-Eleven testbed. The first C-model flight-standard radars are due to be flown on DA4 and DA5, with the first flight in November.
Source: Flight International
