http://www.eurofighter.com/news-and-events/2015/02/eurofighter-typhoon-powers-forward-with-new-enhancement-contract

Eurofighter has today released details of a new capability contract valued at EUROS 200 million delivering a suite of new enhancements to the Eurofighter Typhoon.

As well as introducing a number of upgrades to the Eurofighter’s mission and maintenance systems, the contract, known as Phase 3 Capability Enhancement, will equip the Eurofighter Typhoon to deploy multiple precision-guided air-to-surface weapons at fast-moving targets with low-collateral damage. It further confirms the aircraft’s full multi-role, swing-role capability.

Details of the new enhancements were revealed at the IDEX defence exhibition in Abu Dhabi, today, Sunday 22nd February 2015, at a contract signing in the presence of Philip Dunne, UK Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology, accompanied by Alberto Gutierrez, CEO of Eurofighter and Air-Vice Marshal Graham Farnell and representatives from the other Eurofighter customer nations: for Germany, General Erhard Bὔhler, Director Defence Plans & Policy; representing Italy, Lieutenant General Enzo Stefanini; and for Spain, Ministry of Defence, Secretary of State, Pedro Arguelles, all showing their support for this essential capability.

Alberto Gutierrez, the CEO of Eurofighter, said: “This capability upgrade gives the Eurofighter Typhoon unrivalled full multi-role and swing-role capability. Although the prime focus is the introduction of the Brimstone 2 missile required by the UK RAF, P3E enhances the capabilities of the Storm Shadow long-range strike missile, the Meteor, Paveway IV and ASRAAM weapons, as well as introducing modifications to further improve the aircraft’s already impressive availability. Support for the contract will come from all four core nations and the enhancement package will benefit all who use it.”

Air Vice-Marshal, Graham Farnell, the General Manager of NETMA (NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency), who signed the contract on behalf of the core customer nations, said: “Over the last 18 months the Eurofighter Typhoon community has enjoyed a significant acceleration to the weapon system capability enhancement programme and I am pleased to say we have been able to agree a number of major contracts which really drive the weapon system’s contribution to air power.”

He said: “The agreement of the P3E contract is further evidence that this is a Programme which keeps on delivering. As the hugely successful Panavia Tornado moves towards the last decade of its life cycle, it is highly re-assuring to know that the mantle will be picked up by the Eurofighter Typhoon. Brimstone 2 capability is both a unique and welcome addition to the capability portfolio, and whilst it is just a part of the P3E story, Brimstone represents an extremely important capability to have.”

The four nation contract between the UK, Italy, Germany and Spain will form the basis for the next major Eurofighter enhancement, the Phase 4 Capability Enhancement contract, now in its ‘definition phase’. This will lay the foundation for the Nations’ Combat Air capability requirements into the next decade.

The Phase 3 Enhancement contract is scheduled for delivery in 2017. All four core nations will work on flight control and avionics and the contract will centre round a scheduled programme of weapon testing, the development and testing of flight control systems, and finally store clearing and store release testing. The initial fit for the Brimstone 2 missiles on the Eurofighter will see two launchers fitted to the outboard pylons of the Eurofighter each carrying three Brimstone 2 missiles.

The full swing-role, multi-role weapons compliment on the Eurofighter could now include a mix of: six Brimstone 2 missiles; up to six Paveway IV bombs, two long-range Storm Shadow missiles, four Meteor beyond visual range air-to-air missiles and either two IRIS-T or two ASRAAM heat-seeking missiles.

This weapons package, combined with the high-kinetic performance and super cruise capability of the platform and AESA radar now being integrated onto the platform, confirms Eurofighter as the world’s most versatile fast-jet fighter.

It does have references.

Isn’t this like saying Iran did not lose any F-4s during the Iran-Iraq war, just F-4Ds & F-4Es?!! Needless to say that the export version of SU-17s were dubbed as SU-20 & SU-22 with the post letters showing exact type of the SU-22 model; i.e., SU-22M/M3/M4 . . . but at end they are SU-22s. I do not understand what you mean by “Don’t CONFLAGATE!” If its conflagrate, I still don’t understand by what you mean, “Don’t set fire?”.

He means ‘conflate’ but I don’t agree with him. Kills and losses are generally collated for all versions of an aircraft, e.g. F-14A-D and F-15A-E. Su-22/M/MX are all Su-22s.

And thats all proof we need that speed is the single most important aspect of a fighter. 😉

There is more to a fighter but speed and altitude is very important in the BVR aspect of a fighter’s game, and this goes to prove that the BVR aspect can’t be overlooked. Here we have an aircraft that’s almost completely useless in a dogfight making a better score than purpose-built dogfighters against similar opposition simply based on hit-and-run tactics facilitated by speed and altitude advantage and perhaps a huge radar too. It was commented in the Dogfights documentary on the Discovery Channel, that 2 of the MiG-25s shot down in Gulf War (1991) could have escaped if they’d wanted to after attacking the F-15s.

Obviously there comes a time where running is not an option, e.g. base defence, strike package defence, CAP, intercepting an attack, etc., which is why an air superiority fighter needs MiG-25/interceptor and dogfighter capabilities, a BVR game and a WVR game.

Or a Luneburg lens.

There is only so much abuse science can take…

1. Targets differ. So does EODAS range. As said, it can see the Moon at two hundred thousand miles plus. Does that satisfy your definition of long range?
2. It is poor. The system was never designed for range and/accuracy in the first place.

Of course we can. These parameters define physical limitations of the system beyond which any algorithm used is helpless.

I have already explained and substantiated everything I came to explain:
1. A distant point source is not confined to one pixel, for this reason an algorithm is useful in determining the spread, since the spread is related to the actual sub-pixel position:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN-A6PWRFno
2. Accuracy is not limited to pixel resolution:
Exhibit A
http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=1737844

The star’s centroid plays a vital role in celestial navigation, star images which be gotten during daytime, due to the strong sky background, have a low SNR, and the star objectives are nearly submerged in the background, takes a great trouble to the centroid localization. Traditional methods, such as a moment method, weighted centroid calculation method is simple but has a big error, especially in the condition of a low SNR. Gaussian method has a high positioning accuracy, but the computational complexity. Analysis of the energy distribution in star image, a location method for star target centroids based on multi-step minimum energy difference is proposed. This method uses the linear superposition to narrow the centroid area, in the certain narrow area uses a certain number of interpolation to pixels for the pixels’ segmentation, and then using the symmetry of the stellar energy distribution, tentatively to get the centroid position: assume that the current pixel is the star centroid position, and then calculates and gets the difference of the sum of the energy which in the symmetric direction(in this paper we take the two directions of transverse and longitudinal) and the equal step length(which can be decided through different conditions, the paper takes 9 as the step length) of the current pixel, and obtain the centroid position in this direction when the minimum difference appears, and so do the other directions, then the validation comparison of simulated star images, and compare with several traditional methods, experiments shows that the positioning accuracy of the method up to 0.001 pixel, has good effect to calculate the centroid of low SNR conditions; at the same time, uses this method on a star map which got at the fixed observation site during daytime in near-infrared band, compare the results of the paper’s method with the position messages which were known of the star, it shows that :the multi-step minimum energy difference method achieves a better effect. © (2013) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

The same fundamentals are applicable to position determination in other fields. Centroid calculation is a major part of photonics.
Exhibit B
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staring_array

In radio astronomy the term “FPA” refers to an array at the focus of a radio-telescope (see full article on Focal Plane Arrays). At optical and infrared wavelengths it can refer to a variety of imaging device types, but in common usage it refers to two-dimensional devices that are sensitive in the infrared spectrum. Devices sensitive in other spectra are usually referred to by other terms, such as CCD (charge-coupled device) and CMOS image sensor in the visible spectrum. FPAs operate by detecting photons at particular wavelengths and then generating an electrical charge, voltage, or resistance in relation to the number of photons detected at each pixel. This charge, voltage, or resistance is then measured, digitized, and used to construct an image of the object, scene, or phenomenon that emitted the photons.

Here (at start of article) is an example of what happens at pixel level:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_sensitive_device

The technical term PSD was first used in a 1957 publication by J.T. Wallmark for lateral photoelectric effect used for local measurements. On a laminar semiconductor, a so-called PIN diode is exposed to a tiny spot of light. This exposure causes a change in local resistance and thus electron flow in four electrodes. From the currents Ia, Ib, Ic and Id in the electrodes, the location of the light spot is computed using the following equations.

x=kx⋅Ib−IdIb+Id
and

y=ky⋅Ia−IcIa+Ic
The kx and ky are simple scaling factors, which permit transformation into coordinates.

An advantage of this process is the continuous measurement of the light spot position with measuring rates up to over 100 kHz. The dependence of local measurement on form and size of the light spot as well as the nonlinear connection are a disadvantage that can be partly compensated by special electrode shapes.

These are just some examples of the kinds of technologies that might be employed. You can get an X and Y-axis current, the ratio of which gives the position of the centroid on a pixel for positional accuracy purposes and the vector some of which gives the light intensity for imaging purposes.

We don’t know yet how effective the DAS is going to be to guide missiles off boresight. Personaly I believe it when I see it.

The DAS/HMD is a nice feature but I think having side bays to carry the 2 AAMs would have been much more reliable because the missile would have had its lock before launch. The rail launcher could have been capable of launching either an 9X or a 120. All the more that ejecting a missile from the internal bay might be difficult while pulling a lot of Gs.

I imagine space is the main concern internally, though obviously traditional LOBL will be an option for externally carried missiles. Obviously the main idea will be to maintain stealth and surprise though and try and avoid furballs. However HMD has been used to cue missiles into LOAL visually, so in theory, simply having a sensor sending the image to the HMD, or providing an INS reference directly, shouldn’t really make a difference.

If this is true then we are likely at the beginning of a new era for combat aircraft.

You might as well cut and paste the article into the 6th generation fighter and next generation bomber threads as well.

What’s the range and damage capability though? 3,000lbs is a hefty weight, weren’t they aiming for half that?

Yes a Royal Navy Sea Fury bagged a MiG-15 over Korea and at least one Skyraider took a MiG-17 over Vietnam, with a Zuni rocket I believe.

I thought it was guns, at least that was the story on dogfights.