“Tomorrow’s TyphoonDuring the next decade, Typhoon’s already very impressive air-to-air capabilities will be dramatically transformed as further capability enhancements reach the frontline. The most obvious single improvement will come with the fielding of the MBDA Meteor AAM to replace the ageing AIM-120 AMRAAM in August 2013. This Ramjet-powered missile will give the Typhoon pilot longer reach and an expanded simultaneous multi-shoot capability against long-range manoeuvring targets in heavy ECM. The missile is claimed to have three to six times the kinematic performance of current BVR AAMs and a much expanded ‘no escape zone’, promising to give the Typhoon an even greater ‘edge’.More immediately, the Typhoon force will introduce the new HEA (Head Equipment Assembly), an advanced helmet with a sophisticated head tracking system, which can tell the aircraft’s systems exactly where the pilot is looking. The system allows for accurate off-boresight weapon aiming, and the pilot can designate and engage a target simply by looking at it and committing with a single switch selection or by using selection Direct Voice Input. Flight reference symbology is presented in the pilot’s visor (and can even be overlaid on an enhanced real world night vision ‘picture’).In the longer term, Typhoon is likely to gain an AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar. Eurofighter claim that the existing mechanically scanned (M-Scan) Selex ‘Captor-M’ is a better air-to-air radar than any of today’s in-service AESA radars, with a larger field of regard than an AESA and with much better performance at the edge of the radar scan ‘can slice’ in both azimuth and elevation.This is vital during BVR (beyond visual range) missile engagements, when your missile shot must be followed by a hard supersonic turn to try to defeat any enemy return missile shot, extending the F-pole (the distance between the launch aircraft and the target when the missile hits). But the launch aircraft has to keep the target within his radar scan, in order to continue to track the target and guide the missile in flight. So the launch aircraft turns as quickly as possible to the radar’s gimbal limit, keeping the target aircraft at the edge of the radar scan. A wider scan angle and the best possible range at the azimuth limit, is of critical importance, And, at the moment, Typhoon’s manually-scanned Captor-M provides just those advantages.By contrast, this is an area where conventional, traditional AESA radars are at a disadvantage. At the azimuth limit (which is narrower than that of the Captor-M), the effective aperture of the AESA antenna decreases and the performance (range, sensitivity and resistance to ECM) all diminish.AESA radars do represent the future, however, and offer some compelling advantages, including lower costs of ownership, greater reliability, better beam agility, and the ability to operate simultaneously in air-to-air and air-to-ground modes.Eurofighter has flown a conventional AESA array on the existing Captor ‘back end’, and, thanks to the work of Professor John Roulston (the former technical director of BAE/GEC Marconi’s radar division now part of Selex) are developing a new ‘swashplate’ AESA array which promises to address the traditional AESA’s range and scan angle limitations. This is achieved by mounting a 450 canted antenna on a rotating bearing, which allows the beam to be steered mechanically and electronically out to a maximum of 1050 in any direction – giving a total scan ‘slice’ of 2100, which allows the radar to look up to 150 behind the pilot’s shoulders.The Typhoon’s air-to-air capabilities thus look set to improve by leaps and bounds over the next decade.”“UK Air Defence – The Fighter Force Shrinks” by Jon Lake, pags 52-58, AirForces Monthly August 2008
"In service, Typhoon has proved to be a revelation, offering unmatched performance and agility, and demonstrating better sensor and weapons system performance than anyone dared hope, ‘out of the box’.Former BAE Typhoon project pilot Craig Penrice described the ‘edge’ enjoyed by Typhoon by comparing it with other aircraft he had flown. “I have often been asked how the Typhoon rates amongst the world’s fighters. I have been lucky enough to have flown operationally in the Lightning and F-15, and have had experience in the F-14, F-16, F-18, Tornado and MiG-29 – as well as nearly eight years of involvement in the Typhoon programme. Everybody holds up the Eagle as the example of what a fighter should be. When I was introduced to the F-15 it represented a quantum leap forward from my beloved Lightning, but the quantum leap I experienced going from Lightning to Eagle was repeated when I begun my involvement with Typhoon.“Pilots of the ‘Teen Series’ aircraft will tell you how good their particular jet is, but when you have flown them all it is difficult to notice any particular performance difference between them. When you experience Typhoon you don’t need a force/gauge and a stopwatch to workout the performance differences, you can feel them. As can be seen from the air display performance of Typhoon, it is a highly agile aircraft. It has the ability to change its energy state (both increasing and decreasing it) very quickly. When this is combined with high turn rates and small turn radii you have an excellent fighting machine.”Nor will Typhoon just be a great air combat fighter. Through all of its customers placed their primary emphasis on getting the aircraft into service in the air-to-air role, the aircraft was designed from the start to be a swing-role fighter – a multi-role aeroplane capable of switching from air-to-ground to air-to-air operation (and back again) during the course of a single sortie. The aircraft has always been a versatile, deployable, multi-role aircraft, and not the narrow, Cold War interceptor and air defence aircraft that it has sometimes been painted as.Typhoon is much more than a highly capable multi-role warplane, and will deliver its formidable capabilities with unparalleled cost effectiveness. The RAF has been used to aircraft with maintenance costs that account for 47 percent of their life-cycle costs, but Typhoon will be much cheaper to support (with maintenance costs accounting for less than 25 percent). Eurofighter GmbH is contractually obliged to achieve a figure of just nine maintenance man hours per flying hour. This represents about half the maintenance required by the Tornado and is only one maintenance hour more than is required by the single-engined, radarless Hawk trainer. Moreover, 50 percent of defects have to be repairable within 45 minutes, and 95 percent within three hours, while an engine change has to be achieved within 45 minutes, by a four-man team. This gives the Eurofighter remarkably low ‘costs of ownership’.The extensive use of composites also helps reduce Typhoon’s radar cross section, which is further reduced by the careful use of radar-absorbent material as used in the inlets and around the cockpit. The Eurofighter Typhoon is not an optimised all-aspect stealth aircraft like the US F-22 or F-35, but does have a very low frontal RCS.PowerplantRated at 13,490 lb st (60,03 kN) in dry power, and 20,250 lb st (90,11 kN) with afterburning, the EJ200is far more powerful than any previous Powerplant of similar size, and provides the Typhoon aircraft with a very high thrust-to-weight ratio. This in turn translates into unmatched agility and performance throughout the flight envelope.“When you release the brakes and select maximum reheat the acceleration is almost frightening, reaching 30 knots per second” former Typhoon test pilot Craig Penrice claimed. “The five-second take-off roll gives a breathtakingly short take-off run, and the aircraft is normally airborne in under 1,300 ft (396 m). Once you are off the ground the acceleration continues undiminished. Keeping the ‘burners’ lit you reach 450 knots (833 km/h) before the end of the runway, pull the stick back and you find yourself at 40,000 ft (12192 m) in less than a minute. From there it is not long before you have accelerated out to well into the optimum supersonic conditions around Mach 1.6, and you have the ability to reach and sustain supersonic speed (super cruise) in dry power. The jet will go much faster than Mach 1.6, of course (out beyond Mach 2) but this is where it has to be designed to be optimised for, this provides the ideal balance between turn rate and turn radius. We have a ceiling in excess of 55,000 ft (16764m).What is even more impressive is that these figures are not in relation to some stripped-down, half-fuelled, aircraft with no weapons. These figures apply to the six-missile (four AMRAAM, two ASRAAM) fit, with full internal fuel, full defensive aids, and on a DA (development aircraft). The DAs have about 1300 kg (2,866 lb) of extra instrumentation onboard for flight test purposes which is not present in the production variants.”Through designed for very high performance, light weight, and low parts count, the EJ200 also meets the most stringent maintainability requirements. The engine has a sophisticated Engine Health Monitoring System (EHMS), which comprehensively monitors the engine’s health, and there is easy access for a variety of inspection methods. This allows ‘on condition’ maintenance ‘in place’ on the aircraft, reducing the need for engine removal and removing the need for so many ‘fixed interval’ overhauls. As a result, the EJ200 will offer very low life-cycle costs over its planned 6,000 man-hour life (equivalent to 30 years of operation)."“Focus Aircraft – Eurofighter Typhoon” by Jon Lake, pags 44-75, International Air Power Review Volume 20, AIRtime Publishing 2006
Inside the cockpitThe cockpit is dominated by three Smiths Industries colour flat-panel MFDs and a futuristic-looking GEC-Marconi frameless wide-angle HUD, and with the throttle and stick studded with buttons for the HOTAS (Hands on Throttle and Stick) control of sensors, systems and weapons. Most of these features are not obviously different to those found in the F/A-18 cockpit, however. While the ‘architecture’ is similar, how the cockpit works, and how the pilot works within the cockpit, could scarcely be more different. With a host of onboard sensors, and with other platforms providing offboard sensor data, it would be easy to overload the Typhoon pilot with information. The Typhoon’s cockpit and Man Machine Interface (MMI) have therefore been carefully designed to reduce pilot workload, and to present the pilot with the information he needs, when he needs it, as intuitively as possible, automatically and without having to be ‘asked’.For the Typhoon HOTAS controls are augmented by voice recognition technology, allowing the pilot to do many routine tasks through simple voice commands. These include calling up a different display format to view, changing radio frequencies, and even sorting and selecting specific targets to be attacked. The voice system is mainly used to assist in routine housekeeping tasks, freeing up the HOTAS functionality for more time-critical tasks. The pilot makes his own voice template, which is stored and loaded into the aircraft each time it flies.Sensor FusionThe Typhoon pilot has a powerful radar, with long range, able to simultaneously track and engage a large number of targets, and also has an infrared search and track system, advanced ESM capabilities, and can also receive information from ‘offboard’ sensors (his wingman’s radar and IRST, AWACS, etc). These different sensors will have different degrees of accuracy and reliability in range, azimuth, and certainty of identity, but to allow a manageable workload, these different sensor inputs are merged into a single, correlated overall picture, with single tracks for each target. Physically, the Typhoon’s sensors are integrated and ‘fused’ within the Attack and Identification System (AIS), using STANAG 3910 1,000-Mbit/second optical data bus.Using a series of processes and algorithms collectively known as ‘Sensor Fusion’, the target track information available from the individual sensors is given an appropriate ‘weighting’ based upon such factors as what the source sensor was (angular information from the IRST is particularly accurate, for example), before a ‘weighted’ position is displayed.On the cockpit display the pilot will see a single correlated track, but with minimal further interrogation he is able to see the sources providing this information. Sensor fusion in Typhoon is so useful that many describe it as the aircraft’s most important sensor.With the target detection and sensor management/sensor fusion processes generating solid information as to target and threat priorities, and able to ascertain the most efficient intercept geometry, it is possible for the Flight Control System, Auto-pilot and Auto-throttle to carry out the intercept (and to deal with energy management) automatically, leaving the pilot to monitor the ‘big picture’ and maintain his situational awareness. The Auto-pilot and Auto-throttle can also alleviate pilot workload during the navigation and approach-to-landing phases of a mission.Captor RadarThrough radar is just one of Typhoon’s sensors, the Captor (formerly known as ECR-90) I/J-band (8-12 GHz) Pulse-Doppler multimode radar does form the cornerstone of the fire control system. Developed from the Sea Harrier FA. Mk 2’s Blue Vixen radar, ECR-90 was developed by the Euroradar consortium (GEC Marconi, now BAE Systems, EADS Defence Electronics, FIAR and Inisel, now ENOSA) under a $394,2-million contract awarded on 16 March 1989.The Captor is a modern, state-of-the-art, modular radar, using a conventional, grooved, mechanical, 70-cm (27.5-in) planar array antenna, and incorporating IFF, with an interrogator and an advanced Mode S transponder. The low-inertia antenna has an unusually fast and powerful drive system, using four electrical Samarium Cobalt servos, giving such agility that the radar is capable of interleaved air-to-surface and air-to-air operation.The radar is based on an advanced Travelling Wave Tube, and is extremely resistant to both active and passive counter-measures, and gives excellent differentiation between targets and ground clutter. The radar is highly automated, and automatically selects the appropriate pulse-repetition frequency as it scans, and can then automatically track, identify and prioritise threats. The radar uses three separate data-processing channels to allow simultaneous operation in different modes.The advanced technologies used do give a quantum improvement in performance, and the radar is claimed to offer double the power of the F/A-18’s AN/APG-65, with commensurate advantages in search and track ranges, with a higher resistance to countermeasures, and with impressive all-aspect look-up/down capability.Radar tracks may be shown on the same integrated tactical display as other sensors, but returns may be also be displayed on two multifunction displays in the cockpit , showing a vertical picture of the sky ahead of the aircraft, as well as a horizontal ‘plan’. This can give the pilot a better three-dimensional view of the airborne situation, which may be easier to interpret than tracks presented with their altitudes annotated numerically.Through a moving, mechanically scanned radar is always likely to be less reliable than a true Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), which has multiple redundant transmit/receive modules, it may be more reliable than Passive Electronically Scanned Array radars, which have a similar ‘single line of failure’ because they have a single transmitter/receiver, like the mechanically scanned set, but may generate more heat. Captor is of modular design, making maintenance easier, with some 61 Shop-Replaceable Items (SRIs) and six Line Replaceable Units (LRUs). This also facilitates multi-national production.Reports suggests that the radar can ‘see’ through 120o-140o laterally and has a range against fighter-sized targets in excess of 160km (100 miles), and up to 300km (186 miles) against transport aircraft. It has been suggested that the radar can track up to 20 targets at the same time, and can simultaneously engage six, and has unusually good performance when cutting through surface ‘clutter’.The Captor fitted to early IOC-Standard Typhoons had comprehensive air-to-air capabilities with multi-target track-while-scan, raid assessment, non-cooperative target recognition and close-range combat modes, and further capabilities were added by software changes, including – according to some sources – automatic threat prioritisation and identification, and automatic weapons release.Air-to-ground modes will be added with the full operational capability (FOC) Standard, Block 5, aircraft. These modes will include Doppler bean-sharpened ground-mapping, giving a ground picture with a one-metre resolution for navigation and targeting. There is also a synthetic-aperture radar ground imaging mode with a higher definition 0.3-metre resolution for reconnaissance and ground moving target indication, and there will be a terrain-avoidance mode.“Focus Aircraft – Eurofighter Typhoon” by Jon Lake, pags 44-75, International Air Power Review Volume 20, AIRtime Publishing 2006
“DASSThe Defensive Aids Sub-System (DASS) is a highly modular system, based around five Radstone Technology PLC processors. It combines and integrates a suite of advanced broad-spectrum threat-warning systems, together with a state of the art active countermeasures suite. The initial austere ECM system will be replaced from Block 5. The later system is fully automated, automatically detecting, locating, identifying and prioritising threats, and then deploying the most appropriate countermeasures, in sequence or concurrently, according to the nature of the threat.The DASS includes a fully integrated wideband radar warning receiver and electronic support measures (RWR / ESM) system, with a comprehensive (and rapidly upgradeable) threat library. The system uses antennas in the port wingtip fairing and in the fuselage to give 3600 (spherical) coverage around the aircraft, and covers a frequency range from less than 100 MHz to 10 GHz, and can categorise radars from their operating wavelength, pulse repetition, frequencies and patterns, and scan patterns.The RWR / ESM systems share common processing with other elements and are capable of making quick searches for electromagnetic emitters, with a range in excess of 100 km (62 miles), locating them through sequential triangulation, giving angular accuracies of better than one degree. The ESM sub-system analyses any detected signals, identifying the emitters, categorising them before prioritising any threats, warning the pilot and cueing the ECM, (while also feeding data for sensor fusion). Emitters can be displayed on the moving map display, or on other multifunction display formats.The ECM system is also fully integrated with the ESM, with the same 3600 coverage around the aircraft and with the same frequency coverage. The system employs on-board and off-board jamming, and incorporates chaff and flare dispensers. The active jamming element of the ECM system is accommodated in the port wingtip pod, with RWR / ESM antennas on front and back, while the starboard pod accommodates an Elettronica-developed deception jammer module called ‘Cross Eye’ in the Italian aircraft, and two expendable towed radar decoys (based on the Marconi Ariel) in the RAF aircraft. There is an RWR / ESM antenna on the front of the right wingtip pod.Towed DecoysThe Decoys are towed on the end of a 100-m (328-ft) Kevlar cable which includes a fibre-optic link to the onboard signal generator, and can be deployed and towed at supersonic speeds. The starboard wingtip pod can be configured to carry Cross Eye and a single towed radar decoy.A set of missile approach warning system (MAWS) sensors (based on the GEC-Plessey PVS2000 MAWS and using pulse Doppler millimetre-wave radar technology), are mounted on the wing leading edges and tailcone. A passive missile warning system is reportedly under study. From Block 5, RAF Eurofighters also have a laser-warning sensor, developed by Selex Sensors and Airborne Systems Ltd. Three sensors will be fitted, one on each side of the front fuselage.Typhoon is fitted with two Elettronica Aster SpA chaff / flare dispensers in the inboard actuator fairings. These each carry 16 55-mm IR decoy-flares. Two Saab-Tech AB BOL 180-round chaff / flare dispensers are mounted on the outboard underwing missile launch rails. These countermeasures are deployed automatically by the DASS system, using one of many pre-programmed sequences, and chaff can be illuminated by the active-jamming system to increase its effectiveness, when it is colloquially knows as ‘jaff’.”“Focus Aircraft – Eurofighter Typhoon” by Jon Lake, pags 44-75, International Air Power Review Volume 20, AIRtime Publishing 2006
Boa tarde,Tenho vindo regularmente ao fórum, mas só entro quando coloco mensagens, o que aliás, tenho feito de forma irregular.Achei estranho o facto de uma pessoa, que no ano passado decidiu ignorar-me, venha este ano dizer-me que "é bom ter-me por aqui mais uma vez".As pessoas devem ser coerentes com aquilo que dizem e escrevem.Cumprimentos
por Smoke Trails » Quinta 17 Jul, 2008 12:02 pmÉ o meu inimigo de estimação neste forum. Typhonman Escreveu:Não acredito que o RWR tenha detectado as emissões? Acredito sim, mas ha sistemas para fazer "jamming" a esses mesmos sistemas RWR.O RWR pode ser empastelado?É um sistema passivo que se limita a comparar as emissões que recebe, com uma livraria, indicando ao piloto de onde provém a ameaça e de que tipo se trata.O empastelamento não serão apenas mais emissões para ele identificar?
