Enhanced Eurofighter Typhoon?

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14 years 2 months

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Eurofighter gmbh don't want to end with a whimper, so what could they do to the Typhoon to keep it relevant for decades to come?

I ask the question because Airbus reference an enhanced Typhoon in their FCAS planning and BAE are now talking about how you can apply lessons learned during the testing of Taranis to Typhoon.

Lets assume the systems are pretty advanced anyway, so you are talking about sharing development of sensors and communications equipment between Typhoon and UCAVS, engines and critically structure.

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11 years 7 months

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Eurofighter gmbh don't want to end with a whimper, so what could they do to the Typhoon to keep it relevant for decades to come?

I ask the question because Airbus reference an enhanced Typhoon in their FCAS planning and BAE are now talking about how you can apply lessons learned during the testing of Taranis to Typhoon.

Lets assume the systems are pretty advanced anyway, so you are talking about sharing development of sensors and communications equipment between Typhoon and UCAVS, engines and critically structure.

I think you are on the right track. You could incrementally improve the Typhoon's kinematic performance... improved engines, the aerodynamic tweaks that have already been demoed, etc, but that won't make much of a difference if you assume the Typhoon is fighting high-end threats in the 2020+ timeframe.

On the other hand... enhanced coms, sensors, etc, could allow a Typhoon to act in a supporting role to UCAVs or 5th generation fighters.

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I can't see anything more than aerodynamic tweaking being done to the airframe tbh.

But if you take the engine and guts out of an advanced Typhoon and put it into a 2030 vintage airframe then you are job done as far as the next generation is concerned are you not? Job done, with partners having a good understanding of the different standards and clearances and sensors etc they have worked out on their Typhoons.

With the aircraft being designed to be upgraded in service it is not the same concept as having to start from scratch. The French could even take charge of UCAV interface and communications assuming FCAS (the first one, not the German one) continues to evolve.

The key question is whether EJ200 can be improved upon and still fit inside the Typhoon and will the engine for FCAS be able to power Typhoon, Rafale and a large UCAV?

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15 years 5 months

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pull a SAAB trick and add 40% internal fuel above all

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Well we get down to demand then eh? If the CFTs are there to be had and nobody wants them, is that a desirable thing to be able to do? Does the engine need much doing to it if the aircraft is performing above and beyond the call of duty?

Will those be factors which still stand in 30 years time?

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This is a perfect discussion to have in the Eurofighter thread.

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1. CAPTOR-E AESA radar with full capability.

2. Serial upgrading for DASS EWS, Pirate IRST, data-link, HMD, and avionics.

3. Aerodynamic modification: mainly for improving the flight performance of heavy weapon configuration.

4. Double seated derivative with the new data-link and communication system for controlling UCAV.

5. Capability for using CFTs +/- bigger external fuel tank.

6. Engine upgrading: better SFC, longer service life for engine components, thrust improvement for compensating the increase of fighter's weight.

7. RCS and IR signal reduction.

8. Integration of new weapons and pods.

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16 years 7 months

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Eurofighter gmbh don't want to end with a whimper, so what could they do to the Typhoon to keep it relevant for decades to come?

I ask the question because Airbus reference an enhanced Typhoon in their FCAS planning and BAE are now talking about how you can apply lessons learned during the testing of Taranis to Typhoon.

Lets assume the systems are pretty advanced anyway, so you are talking about sharing development of sensors and communications equipment between Typhoon and UCAVS, engines and critically structure.

CFT´s, new sensors, new comms and new weapons.
For the next decade to a decade and a half, the new radar, Meteor, Spear 3 and Storm Shadow (and its MLU) will make the aircraft relevant, after that use it in suport of a UCAV.

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since they are anyway late: why not GaN aesa to nullify moderate levels of stealth ?

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since they are anyway late: why not GaN aesa to nullify moderate levels of stealth ?

Because that doesn't even make sense?

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The best single near-term capability enhancement would be addition of high bandwidth covert communications so that Typhoons can harness the network capabilities of F-35Bs and P-8As.

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1. GaN has 3 to 5 times of the output of GaAs ~ Only if your electrical and cooling systems can deal with the requirement of power and the removal of heat.

2. GaN is 10 times plus more expensive than GaAs now.

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1. GaN has 3 to 5 times of the output of GaAs ~ Only if your electrical and cooling systems can deal with the requirement of power and the removal of heat.

2. GaN is 10 times plus more expensive than GaAs now.

thanks, i've been longing for current price difference, do you have a source ?
also, how much difference in cost for the entire radar GaN vs GaAs would you suggest ?

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https://www.macom.com/gan

Commercialization

GaN technology is now making the transition from specialized, government funded technology to high volume commercial mainstay. By leveraging the scale volume of the silicon industry, which is two orders of magnitude greater than even the GaAs handset market, we’ll soon be able to leverage GaN for cost-sensitive applications. At maturity, we believe that GaN on Si will benefit from silicon cost structures that are 3X lower than today’s highest volume GaAs and 100X lower cost than today’s GaN on SiC technology.

Unit cost:

GaN on Si: 1X (Bright future anticipation).

GaAs: 3X (The real unit cost today).

GaN on Sic: 100X (The real unit cost today).

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14 years 2 months

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So much of this is about communications (given the weapons, and fuel capacity and sensors are being addressed).

I am assuming the RAF and Italians have plans for communications between Lightning II and Typhoon though, particularly given the emphasis on joint operations by the RAF.

Even with AI as demonstrated with Taranis, you do feel 2 crew would work better on a UCAV mothership though.

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http://images.alphacoders.com/290/290323.jpg

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thanks, i've been longing for current price difference, do you have a source ?
also, how much difference in cost for the entire radar GaN vs GaAs would you suggest ?

It depends what you are comparing the cost too. Is it an arbitrary number of T/R modules on a fixed size array without other requirements than of course GaN could come in as more expensive. If its Cost per watt then it could be a different matter altogether. I know on the AMDR, Raytheon has actually saved money going to GaN because not doing so would have led to a massive array populated with way more GaA T/R modules at an overall higher cost. Sticking to the same performance requirements you can meet the demand by fewer GaN on account of having higher power. Similarly since the semiconductor materials itself is capable of running hotter than GaAs you may require less cooling for a comparable output footprint. Using the same logic, you could drive higher performance by providing even more cooling etc.

It really all ends up on requirements from the sensor, and what the trade studies take you towards. For applications where there is limited space, and high performance demands such was Electronic Attack, we see plenty of GaN options showing up. On Fire Control Radars, I assume that the performance bump from MSCAN to ESCAN is quite significant enough to satisfy long term sensor needs without adding the cost and complexity of choosing a new material that OEM's have less experience with. From a programatic stand-point that is somewhere where they can eliminate risk given that hundreds of radars will be built and acquired.

Raytheon Title III Gallium Nitride (GaN) Production Program - Joseph Smolko, C.S. Whelan, C. MacDonald, J. Krause, B. Mikesell and M. Benedek

The Raytheon Team started work on this Title III program late in 2009. The goal of the program was to optimize Raytheon’s production released GaN MMIC process and enhance the manufacturing readiness from MRL 7 to MRL 8 by the end of the program in support of multiple future DoD system insertions from L-band through Ku-band. Key Performance parameters (KPPs) defined the quantitative program goals; threshold levels being acceptable for a new technology and objective levels reflecting the maturity, yield and robustness of well-established semiconductor technologies such as mature GaAs. The technical portion of the program was comprised of three major tasks:

1. Baseline MRL assessment: Process 24 wafers with the baseline production process and evaluate yield and reliability.

2. Process centering and tightening: Examine shortfalls in the baseline process, analyze root cause and identify a series of experiments to improve the process. Process a minimum of 150 process improvement wafers during this task. Monitor yield improvement and reliability throughout this task.

3. Final MRL assessment: Process 24 wafers with the improved process and verify that KPPs have been achieved and the process is at MRL 8. At the completion of the Final MRL assessment, Raytheon successfully demonstrated that the objective KPPs were achieved and validated the process met the guidelines for MRL 8.
The baseline MRL assessment occurred during the first nine months of the program using the baseline MRL7
process.
...

https://s32.postimg.org/3sedeh1xh/Screen_Shot_2016_07_16_at_6_21_39_AM.png

Table 1 summarizes the improvement in yield from the beginning of the program through the final MRL assessment and compares the yield with our mature GaAs process. Over the course of this program our GaN process yield improved by more than 3X and is now comparable with our mature GaAs process.

https://s31.postimg.org/pkqbb6t0r/Screen_Shot_2016_07_16_at_6_19_13_AM.png

Table 2 illustrates that the improved yield (along with other fab operations improvements) corresponds to a >75% reduction in cost since the start of the program and a solid state power amplifier technology that is less than 1/3rd the cost per Watt as compared to GaAs, including substrate costs.

Conclusion

https://s31.postimg.org/enjh5ytaj/Screen_Shot_2016_07_16_at_6_25_47_AM.png

At the completion of the Title III Gallium Nitride (GaN) on Silicon Carbide (SiC) MMIC Production Program, Raytheon demonstrated that the objective KPPs were achieved, and demonstrated a significantly improved producibility and process maturity (Table 4), meeting the overarching MRL 8 program objective.

At the end you need a large industrial scale military program to develop capacity for X-band components in GaN. With GaAs you have these programs across the wider applications (ground and ship radars etc). Looking at a 5-10 year horizon in the US, I see the AMDR-X doing a lot of that work in the coming years, just as AMDR-S has created capacity to leverage economies of scale allowing other programs to piggy back on them for sensors operating in that band. One hope for X-Band GaN capacity increase was the original AN/TPY-2 based Stacked LRDR proposal from Raytheon but they went with a lower cost GaN S-Band Lockheed design instead to stay within budget. While the TPY-2's (X-band) have transitioned to GaN with the first radar with GaN components set to be delivered later this year, the volume isn't significant enough to create capacity that other programs can leverage down the road. SAAB has its X-band Giraffe that uses GaN but that is also unlikely to be a very large program. In a few days from now we may see Lockheed Announce a GaN X-Band radar for the PATRIOT competition but they are the underdogs in that program given the integration advantage to Raytheon so that is also unlikely to create high demand for GaN X-band components for military applications. The French also offered to insert GaN X-Band components into its Arable radar as an upgrade for Poland's WISLA program, but there is no clear timeline given they lost that competition.

For a quick guide to MRL/TRL's -

https://s32.postimg.org/gyy99zdb9/Screen_Shot_2016_07_16_at_6_33_47_AM.png

IIRC, In the US Raytheon and Cree are at MRL-8, while Qorvo is at MRL-9.

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10 years 8 months

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since they are anyway late: why not GaN aesa to nullify moderate levels of stealth ?

What are moderate levels of stealth?

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15 years 8 months

Posts: 992

RCS of around 0.01 m2 class (-15~-25 dB) I guess.

http://saab.com/globalassets/publications-pdfs/aeronautics/gripen/ps_05_a_fighter_radar_brochure.pdf

According to the declaration of Saab, the newest uprade for PS-05/A Mk4 radar could make it track the target of the RCS = 0.1m2 class at the same range of the previous PS-05/A MK3 radar to track the target of the RCS = 4.0m2 class in the high altitude before 2014.

And then considering the radar with the similar or even the better upgrading mentioned above and the AESA techonology (Raven ES-05), and its bigger brother with about 50% more T/R modules (CAPTOR-E).

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7 years 10 months

Posts: 330

Just ran into an AFM publication regarding a previous Red Flag. See inset and bottom righthand column. Now can any Rafale people provide a similar level of non-blog-related evidence.

http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a508/sigmafour1/Red%20Flag_zpshanwvbgn.png

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13 years 5 months

Posts: 593

can manned fighter jets still be relevant, or at least worth the cost?
the next 10 years will see the introduction of UCAVs, next gen SA artillery and ffs lasers
meaning they can't be used for
- missile duels: UCAVs can do that better and much cheaper
- dogfighting: again UCAVs do it better and cheaper, not to mention lasers make any WVR combat instant suicide
- ground attack: UCAVs = cheaper and better, and advanced ground defences like smart optical missiles (they'll keep coming until they hit your, explode or run out of fuel, and are immune to stealth or active jamming), lasers (that'll shoot down any aircraft WVR or any ordnance you might drop at them) and oh railguns ($25,000 per shot at 250 km range that comes in at Mach 5, start dodging)

sure UCAV controller is an obvious role, but again it'll be a sitting duck and an expensive, short-ranged human delivery system
and by the time it does get integrated in that role UCAVs won't need a human controller anymore

the other thing is exponential technological evolution, meaning that by the time you have integrated all this new technology into the platform, it's probably already outdated. not a good thing on such an expensive platform