Eurofighter Typhoon
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Originally bearing the uninspired name of the European Fighter Aircraft (EFA), this state of the art jet fighter was designed to lead the air forces of Europe into the twenty-first century.
Quickly retitled the Eurofighter 2000, the four nation consortium of England, Germany, Italy and Spain used innovative ideas and new construction techniques to give it unprecedented air superiority.
The Head Up Display is very technologically advanced. The motion of the pilot's head is tracked, allowing a virtual reality representation of the view outside along with cockpit, sensor and weapon data to be superimposed over the 'real world' view using a specially developed holographic lens.
An active microphone housed inside the oxygen mask on the helmet is linked to a voice recognition system allowing the pilot to give spoken commands to the aircraft - and it actually talks back. The calm and soothing female voice, which test pilots have nicknamed 'Nagging Nora', says things like "Target in range", "Incoming missile", "Pull up, pull up" and "The missiles are swinging round and gaining on us, you can't shake them, we are quite definitely going to die"
Another interesting point to note is that the aircraft is inherently
unstable. A quadruplex digital control system provides artificial stability by making rapid adjustments to the control surfaces. This inherent instability means that the EF2000 is amazingly manoeuvrable.
This new name was obviously far too exciting and so it was renamed once again to Typhoon, partly to annoy the Germans, but mostly to fit in better with previous aircraft such as the Hurricane, the Tornado, the Mild Breeze and the Light North-Easterly.
Quickly retitled the Eurofighter 2000, the four nation consortium of England, Germany, Italy and Spain used innovative ideas and new construction techniques to give it unprecedented air superiority.
The Head Up Display is very technologically advanced. The motion of the pilot's head is tracked, allowing a virtual reality representation of the view outside along with cockpit, sensor and weapon data to be superimposed over the 'real world' view using a specially developed holographic lens.
An active microphone housed inside the oxygen mask on the helmet is linked to a voice recognition system allowing the pilot to give spoken commands to the aircraft - and it actually talks back. The calm and soothing female voice, which test pilots have nicknamed 'Nagging Nora', says things like "Target in range", "Incoming missile", "Pull up, pull up" and "The missiles are swinging round and gaining on us, you can't shake them, we are quite definitely going to die"
Another interesting point to note is that the aircraft is inherently
unstable. A quadruplex digital control system provides artificial stability by making rapid adjustments to the control surfaces. This inherent instability means that the EF2000 is amazingly manoeuvrable.
This new name was obviously far too exciting and so it was renamed once again to Typhoon, partly to annoy the Germans, but mostly to fit in better with previous aircraft such as the Hurricane, the Tornado, the Mild Breeze and the Light North-Easterly.
| Dimensions | Performance | |||
| Wing span | 10.95 m | Max level speed | Mach 2.0 | |
| Wing aspect ratio | 2:205 | Runway length | 700 m | |
| Length overall | 15.96 m | 'g' limits | +9'g' / -3'g' | |
| Height overall | 5.28 m | |||
| Wing area | 50.0 m2 | Powerplant | ||
| Weight empty | 9,999 kg | Two EJ200 engines | ||
| Max takeoff weight | 21,009 kg | Total combat thrust | 40,000 lbs | |
