The canard-delta wing craft multi-national pride Eurofighter Typhoon first flew in March 27 1994. The Typhoon began as a joint project between Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. As we know, France split from the group in 1985 to pursue their own fighter, which became the Rafale. The two fighters share a similar overall appearance because of their common origin.
Whatever you want to call the Typhoon, there’s no denying that the fighter is well-suited for its air dominance role with instantaneous and sustained turn rates, low wing loading, high thrust-to-weight ratio, excellent all-around vision and ease of handling. It’s two turbofans generate a combined thrust of 18 396kg, which is comparable to the F-14 Tomcat’s, but an unladen Typhoon weights half as much as the weight of an empty Tomcat. This is due to the Typhoon being constructed by using lightweight composite materials and glass fibre.
The good vision the pilot has from a Typhoon serves it’s sophisticated attack systems well, and its identification and defence systems include Infra-Red search and track, advanced medium and short-range air-to-air missiles and largely a comprehensive electronics warfare suite. Despite it lacking stealth the Typhoon can put up a tough fight, especially when you realise that it doesn’t just have chaffs and flares, but decoys as well carried on its wingtip pods.
Despite it’s intended role, the Typhoon is really an all-around multirole combat fighter. It’s basic armaments consist of one 27mm cannon and 13 hardpoints carrying up to 6 500kg of ordinance from short and medium range AAMs to wide range of stand-off weapons, bombs and rockets. It’s underside looks like they just bolted every single sort of missile and rocket they could and made it fly fast.
All this sounds good, but it could’ve been even better, if not for Germany threatening to remove themselves from the joint project in 1992 due to rising costs.
The Typhoon requires fly-by-wire system as it is aerodynamically unstable. This offers the fighter high levels of agility, enhanced lift and reduced drag. Fly-by-wire has become standard to a large extent, which can be equated to power steering in cars. The pilots also have a relatively advanced cockpit with wide angle HUD and three monitors displaying the needed instrument information and flight data. The helmets even have a sight for the weapons, and direct voice input allows the pilot controls by talking to the fighter. That’s some serious sci-fi shit right there; Next thing you know is that some poor bastard falls in love with their machine while fighting some strawberry jam aliens.
The British variants of the Typhoon are assembled by BAE Systems from components produced in partner countries, and partner countries have their own assembly lines in Munich, Turin and Madrid. There are numerous variants of the Typhoon, and even a navalised variant has been proposed.
Unlike the F-14 Tomcat, the TSF version of the Typhoon stands well next to its original counterpart. Numerous elements are instantly recognizable, despite the legs again being more or less based on nothing.
Much like the fighter, the TSF EF-2000 is a fast hitting machine wielding sharpened components in almost every part of its body, which gives it an edge in engaging the BETA over American F-22A. These components also work as control surfaces during high speed maneuvers. Then you have the Euro Front only weapons: BWS-8 Flugelberte with the Germans, a goddamn axe, and the choice of weapon of the British Storm Vanguards, the BWS-3 Great Sword that’s made so insanely over the top that it’s nickname’s the Fort Slayer.
Despite all these close-combat abilities, the EF-2000 is able to carry the more or less usual GWS-9 Assault Guns, but also has the access to the absolutely bombastic Mk.57 Squad Support Gun, which is essentially a high-mobility support gun for the TSFs. While the US doctrine is to shoot everything and most others combine traditional armour forces with the aforementioned traditional forces, the Euro Front employs the Mk.57 with its TSFs to support each other, freeing thanks and others to stay at defensive positions. With the range of over 20km and high mobility of the EF-2000, the Mk.57 has made its impact.
What more to add? While visually the real life fighter is a bit dull, the TSF is absolutely spot-on.
Aaltomies 
