First Typhoon Tranche 3 Front Fuselage Rolls Off Production Line

The first Typhoon Tranche 3 Front Fuselage unit has rolled off the production line at our Samlesbury site.

Under the Tranche 3A contract signed in 2009, a total of 112 aircraft have been ordered for the four European partner nations, with 40 aircraft bound for the Royal Air Force. Deliveries of Tranche 3 aircraft are expected to start in 2013.

Building on the success of the Typhoons already proven in service, as demonstrated during Libyan Operations, Tranche 3 aircraft will be even more capable.

The Tranche 3 front fuselage, part of the British single seat aircraft number 116, includes over 350 modified parts designed, engineered and assembled ready to incorporate the most advanced capability enhancements.

BAE Systems Saudi Arabia concluded a contract for the processing capacity to repair Typhoon aircraft in national facilities

BAE Systems Saudi Arabia is very pleased to announce that it has invested SAR-65M with Advanced Electronics Systems (AEC) and Rockwell Collins Deutschland (RCD) to bring into Saudi Arabia the repair capability for the Cockpit Interface Unit (CIU) Interface Processor Unit (IPU) key avionics boxes on the Typhoon Aircraft, the Royal Saudi Air Force’s (RSAF) and Salam Project Office’s latest and most advanced fast jet aircraft.

This repair capability is expected to be installed and commissioned in the AEC facilities in Riyadh in June 2014 with In Kingdom repairs for the CIU & IPU commencing shortly thereafter. This investment with AEC and RCD will be followed up later this year with a further investment which will bring additional avionics repair capabilities to AEC.

What the F-22 vs. the Typhoon tells us

The anti-F-22 crowd over at Wired bring up some great points about the F-22 and Typhoon. Also, they may have overlooked or just didn't get around to mentioning some other things in the big picture of air power emerging threats.

For starters, while the F-22 may face some challenges in air-to-air combat, anything less than that is going to suffer a hard time in coming anti-access threat scenarios.

With the Typhoon, consider that (except for its F-18-class airframe profile), its speed and performance mimic some of the SU-35 capability. The SU-35 is the non-stealth reference threat for the Pacific in coming years. It was designed to exploit the Raptor. However many of the SU-35 are made, expect its technology to bleed elsewhere.

One big difference between the F-22 and the Typhoon is that one of them is going to have more difficulty in a high-end SAM environment.