The EuroFighter:Variants in series Production

The Eurofighter T1

Typhoon T1
The Typhoon will replace the RAF's Tornado F3 (fighter) and Jaguar (ground attack) forces.
The first Typhoon T1 is one of the Instrumented Production Aircraft (IPA) and remains part of the BAE fleet. The aircraft's maiden flight was on April 15 2002.
On June 27 2004 two RAF T1s left Warton bound for Singapore. This is the longest deployment of the Typhoon and the first outside Europe. While the Eurofighter development fleet was exhaustively tested for operations in extreme climates this provided operational experience of such deployments.

Typhoon T1A
The Typhoon T1 is a tranche 1, batch 1 twin seat trainer.

Typhoon F2
The F2 is the single seat fighter variant. The first F2 is IPA5 and also remains with BAE, its first flight was June 6 2002.

The UK agreed to approve production of "Tranche 2" in December 2004, this tranche will see the RAF receive a further 89 aircraft, bringing its Typhoon inventory to 144. This followed protracted negotiations regarding the early introduction of ground attack capabilities of the aircraft and hence its swing-role capability. While this was always planned it was intended to come at a much later date.

In 2001, it was announced that the Royal Air Force (RAF) would not use the aircraft's internal 27 mm Mauser cannon. This was due to a desire to save money by removing gun support costs, ammunition stocks, training costs, etc. The gun was also deemed unnecessary since the missile armament was believed to be adequate in the Typhoon's fighter role. However, because removal of the cannon would affect the aircraft's flight characteristics, requiring modification of the aircraft's flight software the RAF decided that all of its Typhoons would be fitted with the cannon but that it would not be used or supported. The service argued that this would save money by reducing the requirement for ground equipment, removing training costs and avoiding the fatigue effects of firing the cannon. The RAF maintained the option to activate the cannons at very short notice were operational requirements to change.However in a third change of policy, the Daily Telegraph reported in October 2006 that the RAF will fully utilise the cannon