Eurofighter goes Electric

When a European country without a domestic candidate looks for a multirole fighter, I usually rank the chances of the Eurofighter somewhere between “low” and “abysmal”. It’s not that it’s a bad aircraft, but the decision by the partner nations to focus on air-to-air performance, and to first roll it out into service for the air-to-air role, has meant that the aircraft has been weighed somewhat differently than what your average F-16AM operator wishes for.

However, not every country in Europe is a F-16 operator. Finland is a very happy F/A-18C Hornet operator, and looks at fighters in a somewhat different way from many otherwise comparable European air forces. Part of this is down to history, part of it is the lack of a military alliance, and eventually it all translates into doctrinal differences. The gist of the argument is that the air-to-air mission always comes first, and once that can be handled, the rest will take care of itself. Or as HX programme director col. Keränen puts it:

These scenarios [according to which HX contenders are evaluated] include counter air (air defence), counter land (air to ground), counter sea (air to sea), intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and targeting, and long-range strike.

Out of these five scenarios, counter air is the most critical one and therefore takes precedence. Counter air is where a candidate’s capability to perform in combats both with fighters and ground based air defence is evaluated. This is a critical capability: the HX multirole fighter may get engaged in air combat or be attacked by ground based air defence in addition to other tasks.

The official translation of the Finnish text might not be the best, but you get the point.

For Finland, the Eurofighter actually does make sense in quite a few different ways. The focus on speed and semi-recessed missiles is just what’s needed for the air policing mission, which is the key operational mission of the Air Force in peacetime. Especially after Kuopio-Rissala became the most important base for the intercepts over the Gulf of Finland, cruise speed is of the essence. For the long-range strike role, even operating solely on internal fuel the Eurofighter/Storm Shadow-combination could easily replace the JASSM equipped Hornet. The Eurofighter also has a large number of operators, all with slightly different outlooks on how to meet the need of the modern battlefield, providing several development paths to choose from.

One of the more interesting changes to appear this autumn has been the renewed focus on electronic warfare in general and the SEAD/DEAD-mission set in particular. The Eurofighter feature the DASS (Defensive Aid Sub-System), but it has generally been regarded as inferior to the SPECTRA of the Rafale or to the upcoming Arexis of Gripen E. Whether this is a correct judgement or simply an effect of the focus placed on the EW-part of their aircraft in the marketing by Dassault and Saab is impossible to judge conclusively based on open sources, but it is now clear that the Eurofighter consortium has decided to step up their game in this area.

A key item here was the announcement of the Praetorian Evolution concept for a thorough upgrade of the DASS. Part of the larger Typhoon Long Term Evolution activity, in the words of a BAE Systems representative the “Praetorian Evolution is a conceptual roadmap that presents a number of options for a future DASS architecture”. As such, it isn’t a set package, but an assortment of options that can be picked by the operating countries to move forward with. A key part enabling this is the the ‘all digital architecture’ of the updated DASS. Elements of this already exist within the current DASS, but Praetorian Evolution would see the digital coverage increased within the system to take advantage of recent advances in the field. The idea is to turn the cranks to eleven, creating what Eurofighter has dubbed “digital stealth”.

Yes, it’s a marketing term. But as Eurofighter has decided to use the moniker for it’s EW-concept, it’s worth looking into what they mean with it to understand how they envision the Eurofighter will operate to stay survivable and lethal on the future battlefield.

The approach is two-pronged:

First, the situational awareness has to be good enough to supply the pilot with an accurate picture of the threat environment to highlight which emitters are where, allowing the pilot to make informed decisions to keep the aircraft out of range from SAMs and enemy fighters. A key part here is the mission data set (including the database allowing the correct identification of emitters), which can be updated within ‘hours’ to ensure that the aircraft understands what the sensors see. On a slightly longer scale, the software behind key subsystems such as the radars will be updated every few months. This is also a feature of the Eurofighter’s lack of locked black boxes and unforgiving IP’s that is a strong selling point compared to the transatlantic competition.

However, it isn’t always possible to simply hide and stay out of harms way. In those situations, the EW suite will do its best to either hide the signature of the aircraft, or create enough noise to make the picture confusing as to deny the enemy a targeting opportunity. For this part, the aircraft not only employ onboard, towed, and podded sensors, but will also feature the upcoming SPEAR EW. This is a stand-in jammer based on the same hardware as found in the BriteCloud expendable active decoy (also integrated on the Eurofighter), but mounted in place of the warhead on a SPEAR missile. This lighter and smaller load compared to the warhead allows for up to three times the range of the normal SPEAR, and ones fired the missile can fly towards the enemy and either simply blind the enemy radars, or spoof them by creating one or several (50 being mentioned) false targets. The triple-carriage of the baseline SPEAR is also available for the EW-variant, and allows the operators to mix and match however they want (a total of twelve can be carried on four hardpoints while still leaving the two ‘wet’ wing stations free for drop tanks). As the SPEAR is the RAF’s SEAD-weapon of choice, this allows for interesting combinations, where a pair of Typhoons can release a SPEAR EW acting as a false target to bait the enemy air defences into action, allowing the fighters to map the current positions of the enemy radars. These are then jammed by a salvo of a few more SPEAR EWs, while at the same time a dozen (or more) standard SPEAR missiles target the radars in saturation attacks. However, the SPEAR EW isn’t just a SEAD/DEAD weapon, but also plays an interesting role in air-to-air scenarios, where the ability to spoof enemy fighters create interesting tactical opportunities. While the SPEAR EW was officially unveiled only this autumn, it is part of the Eurofighter-package for HX.

Electronic combat capability is offered to Finland in our proposal in a different way [compared to the ECR] through developments in electronically-scanning radar technology and the integration of electronic warfare weapons such as SPEAR EW, which is being developed through a UK-funded programme.

Which brings us to another recently unveiled project that caused quite a stir, the Eurofighter ECR concept offered to the German Air Force.

The German Air Force is one of three NATO air forces to operate a dedicated SEAD/DEAD platform, in the form of the Tornado ECR operated by the TaktLwG 51 “Immelmann”. These will bow out together with the rest of the German Tornado-fleet during the next decade, and a replacement for the Tornado IDS and ECR fleet is sought either in the form of more Eurofighters or F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, with EA-18G Growlers providing the Tornado ECR-replacement. The Eurofighter ECR concept is tailored to meet the German requirements, and include signal-homing missiles in the form of the AGM-88E AARGM, new large podded jammers, two more ‘wet’ stations to allow the drop tanks to move out of the way for said jammers, and a new decoupled rear cockpit for the WSO. The ECR as such is not part of the offer to Finland, but “as with any technology developed by the Eurofighter consortium, the option of an ECR will be available to Finland as a future growth option.” The options also include picking just the parts of the concept deemed suitable for Finnish needs. This could e.g. translate into acquiring just the jammers without the new ‘wet’ stations and accepting the range and endurance limitations it causes.

The Eurofighter consortium’s claim is that “digital stealth” is more flexible and adaptable than traditional low-observable technologies which are built into the aircraft itself, and can more easily be adapted to face new threats. This largely follows the same line of reasoning presented by Boeing, Dassault, and Saab, and on paper hold serious merit. If there is a breakthrough in some “anti-stealth” technology, the F-35 might lose it’s most important unique selling point. However, for the foreseeable future the X-band radars will continue to play an important role in most engagements, especially for the crucial step of producing an accurate enough fix on the target’s location that it can be shot down, and here a smaller radar cross section is always smaller than a larger radar cross section. The question is how big a difference that makes compared to other features? Currently the answer is “quite a lot”, but will the same answer hold true in 2035?

The Eurofighter is still an underdog in the HX programme. The largest question continues to be if, and in that case how, BAE Systems can guarantee that Finland won’t be left as the sole operator trying to keep the aircraft at the cutting edge past 2050. The aircraft itself likely isn’t the issue, the space and raw power certainly is there, but the question is if the other operators will be interested in spending money on it after the FCAS and Tempest programs sees new aircraft entering service sometime after 2040. Still, it wouldn’t be the first time an underdog scores big in a Finnish defence programme, and the Eurofighter does have a few really strong cards on hand. Played right, and the competition just might turn out to the benefit of the large eurocanard.