Flying ‘Typhoons'

With a roar the Mikado yellow Eurofighter Typhoon jet zipped overhead as Mark Bowman, Chief Test Pilot for combat aircraft at BAE Systems, deftly took the plane into a somersault above the company's aerodrome at Preston in the north-east of England and disappeared into the clouds.  The ground-trembling sound subsided as quickly as it made itself felt and peace returned to the Warton Aerodrome.

The six sq.mile-site, which acted as a US army base during War World War II, is at the heart of the British aerospace company's work in the UK. Some 8,000 people work on everything, from assembling and testing its Hawk aircraft to developing the prototypes for its pilotless aircraft (unmanned aerial systems in industry jargon). Crucially it is where the Eurofighter Typhoons — the twin-engine, one-person, combat aircraft being built by a European consortium — are assembled for British and Saudi Arabian contracts. The vast majority of workers are based around the site, while others arrive on the daily company flights that shuttle between the site and London.  There's also much to-ing and fro-ing with BAE's neighbouring Samlesbury facility.

Should Eurofighter win the bid to supply India with 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) the aircraft will not be assembled here in the UK but over in Germany, where Cassidian leads the India bid. Italy, Germany, Spain and the UK, the four partners in Eurofighter, each have a final assembly line of their own, with work split among them.

The art of the matter

 Hangar 302, where the Typhoons are finally assembled, is a massive and surprisingly neat space capable of holding up to 24 aircraft — there's little sign of any stray bits and pieces that aren't being put to immediate use. Bright yellow piping runs along the roof, and a handful of engineers, in half-sleeved blue uniform, work on planes in various stages of readiness, giving it a laboratory feel; 165 people work in and around the hangar, and can put a Typhoon together in about 40 weeks (at a stretch and with additional manning they say that can be brought down to 16).

The operations are managed by Martin Topping, a jovial and enthusiastic engineer who talks animatedly about the Typhoons in terms that don't immediately strike a lay person as flattering descriptions. They're  “inherently unstable” (apparently vital for their ability to carry out complex manoeuvres, twists and turns), he says, and a “supersonic piece of plastic” (turns out that metal in the body of the plane is heated to around 900 degrees centigrade till it becomes a plastic, in a process called superplastic forming). After the planes leave Topping's care, it's up to Bowman's team to ensure the aircraft are airworthy, though an inordinate level of testing — using lasers — is done in the Hangar itself. 

In a corner of the company's presentation room stands a helmet that seems to fit somewhere between a snazzy motorbike helmet (with two visors) and something Darth Vader might wear. Bowman explains it's got an optical tracking system: pull the first visor down and one sees a screen — rather like in a computer game — which allows one to “lock onto” a target by simply moving one's head around and putting the green “cross” at the centre of one's view onto the target (instructions are relayed back and forth between the helmet and the plane). It takes a few minutes for a lay person to get a sense of what's happening, but in a while I too was able to keep a rough track of the simulated target that darted around on the screen.

In fact, simulation forms a big part of BAE's training programmes for its various vehicles.  A video, taken from a real virtual training session, shows just what the novice combat pilot is up against, even if he's been through countless hours of flight time. The virtual plane has an extremely bumpy ride as the pilot keeps track of the numerous things that are happening around him, while a stern instructor barks instructions in the background.

Hawk in the sky

While the Eurofighter project will be a major part of BAE's future, it's the two-seater Hawk, a craft that dates back to the late 70s, that's been a staple for the company over the past few decades (nearly a 1,000 have been sold). Stepping onto the seat of the smart black Royal Airforce plane to climb into the tiny front cockpit, one finds fewer dials than one might expect on such a craft, though one might be surprised that the proverbial “red button” does exist after all. “Whatever you do, don't touch the ejection button under the seat!” warns Adam Shaw, Team Leader, Hawk, who manages the site. There's not a switched-on mobile to be seen anywhere near the aircraft — whether they're fully operational or not — for fear of triggering that mechanism.

Sleek Mantis

 Security is on a different scale altogether when it comes to the large hangar that houses BAE's latest prized project — unmanned air systems — capable of everything from military reconnaissance to civilian search and rescue. Stern signs warn against photography, while Dave Kershaw, Strategy and Business Development Director, leads the way along the “blue path” that must be stuck to. There are a handful of different planes, and though a few prototypes have been built and tested, they've not reached the stage of full-fledged production, explains Kershaw.

BAE is currently looking at how it could develop aircraft that are even capable of covering densely populated areas, and capable of navigating almost independently of ground support, says Kershaw, standing next to one of the main prototypes, Mantis.

It's a sleek looking plane that one could mistake for a regular aircraft, right down to its cockpit-shaped front, aside from the fact that this windowless section is where the satellite, capable of honing down to footprints on a beach, is stored.  

Potential UAS technology cooperation is being discussed informally with India's Defence Research and Development Organisation, he says.

Though it has currently got only 90 people of its own in India, BAE has just made India an official “home market”.

“It's a signal of our intent to get the number to tens of thousands over the course of time,” says Michael Christie, senior vice-president of the company's operations in India.

 As the jet returns us and a plane-load of suited BAE executives to London, after a day that felt a mix between a university crash-course and a theme park adventure, it takes quite an effort to keep in mind the real-world use Warton's aircraft can be put to — with terrifying results.

(This version of the article is different from the one originally published. The article has been edited for errors.)

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