What has been your experience with Eurofighter Typhoon?
We are looking for a total of 180 Eurofighter Typhoons in the Luftwaffe in the coming years. We will replace the MiG-29s, F-4s and most of our Tornadoes with Eurofighter. The induction of Eurofighter started in 2002-2003 and today we operate Eurofighter in two fighter wings. The first wing was equipped in April 2004 and since then we have trained 50 pilots and 20 instructor pilots. I am one of the pilots and have flown 70 hours on the Eurofighter. This Monday itself, I had done an air defence mission in north Germany. This I do to maintain my own experience and see how the aircraft is getting ahead with all its capabilities acquired in the last 25 years. We also have an extensive support contract with Austria. We will eventually have 24 Austrian pilots.
In the last five and half years, we have flown 11,000 accident-free hours on this aircraft. Over all, the four participating air forces (Germany, UK, Italy and Spain) have flown over 60,000 hours on this aircraft. This aircraft now has higher reliability, needs less reaction time and has low maintainability as compared with Tornado when we introduced it in the Luftwaffe 25 years ago. When we first introduced the Eurofighter Typhoon, the key task was training to get acquainted with the system from the technical and pilot’s viewpoints. We inducted the Eurofighter in our inventory only after we consolidated this aspect.
We brought the Eurofighter into the NATO with the policing role and realised that with this aircraft we could meet and beat the NATO standards. Having been a fighter pilot for 40 years, I am amazed with Eurofighter’s aerodynamics, state of the art avionics, the economic cockpit design which is very spacious. Moreover, the engine of the Eurofighter, Eurojet, is both powerful and reliable; it can cross over to 10,000 ft in 10 seconds. You would have noticed the performance of Eurofighter in the hot conditions of Bangalore when the German Air Force had deployed three Eurofighters during Aero India 2009. I was amazed at the performance of the Eurofighter in Bangalore where it was flying with the other machines.
What are the future steps for Luftwaffe regarding the Eurofighter?
We are slowly introducing the multi-role capability in coordination with the EADS company. By the end of this year, we will have the first bomber wing with this capability. This will be done by the Tranche II aircraft which will be deployed under NATO for air defence in the Baltic states for two months. This shows that I trust the aircraft to do air defence in the three Baltic states just outside the Russian border in the months of September and October.
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