On November 29, Germany’s parliament authorized funding for Airbus to convert 15 of their air force’s (the Luftwaffe’s) Eurofighter Typhoon fighters right into a micro fleet of specialised Typhoon-EK electronic attack jets. These Elektronischer Kampf (“electronic battle”) jets should, in theory, be able to locating the position of hostile ground-based radars using electromagnetic sensors—blinding them with powerful jammers and destroying the emitters using home-on-radar missiles.
Electronic attack jets just like the U.S. Navy’s two-seat EA-18G Growler have the job of suppressing or misdirecting the enemy’s abilities in order that others on the team can safely press the attack.
Because the Sixties, Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) tactics have grow to be vital for warplanes wishing to penetrate enemy air defenses with acceptable odds of survival—especially non-stealth aircraft. And as electronic attack jets remain agile, weapons-capable fighters, they will accompany the planes they’re escorting deeper into hostile airspace and hold their very own in a fight.
Currently, the Luftwaffe’s SEAD capability comes from an electronic attack variant of the twin-engine European Panavia Tornado jet. 21 of those Tornado ECR remain in 51st Tactical Air Force Wing. German and Italian Tornado ECRs saw extensive combat use within the 1999 Kosovo war, during which they launched quite a few HARM anti-radar missiles (236 and 115, respectively) at Yugoslavian radars. The ECRs also provided electronic escort and reconnaissance in the course of the war in Bosnia in 1995, the operation supporting anti-Qaddafi rebels in Libya in 2011, and the anti-ISIS war in 2015.
However the Tornado, which entered service in 1979, has been phased out of British service and will probably be retired within the Italian and German air forces between 2025-2030. They’ll eventually get replaced with more survivable and agile 4.5-generation Typhoons and 5th-generation American F-35A Lightning stealth fighters.
The Typhoon-EK conversion is estimated to cost 384 million euros, or roughly $27 million per plane. It’s unclear which aircraft of the 4 generations of Typhoons (Tranches 1, 2, 3A, and 4), either in Luftwaffe service or on order, will probably be converted.
Nevertheless, the advantageous print of Airbus’s announcement reveals that the Typhoon-EK has a significant shortcoming in its initial configuration: though a press releases claims that its latest wingtip jammers will “improve the Eurofighter’s self-protection,” it doesn’t mention any broader jamming capability.
While self-defense jamming is definitely vital for an aircraft designed to fight anti-aircraft weapons, it’s not the identical as escort jamming capable of protect other planes. Indeed, the brand new Saab jammers appear roughly same as those installed as standard self-defenses on Swedish Gripen-E jets—which are usually not dedicated electronic attack jets. (The Gripen E also sports a 3rd small emitter on its tail.)
In truth, their installation may come on the expense of existing electronic support countermeasure (ESCM) pods and towed decoy components which might be a part of Typhoon’s Praetorian DASS self-defense system.
To be fair, Saab’s Arexis system does include larger escort jamming pods that technically will be mounted on Typhoons. But they might be mounted on mid-wing pylons which might be normally reserved for carrying extra fuel tanks. For that reason, earlier concept art—suggesting a Typhoon could carry jammers midwing and fuel tanks on the inner wing—isn’t feasible without re-engineering the wing’s interior.
German defense author Alex Luck wrote on social media that this configuration “has been a nonstarter for a very long time because the inner hardpoints on Eurofighter are usually not wet [compatible with fuel tanks]. And rewiring them costs a lot money it’s not likely within the cards.”
This also signifies that the cancellation of plans to develop a fuselage-hugging conformal fuel tank for Typhoon (one that may release pylons) further stymies the EK’s jamming options.
Still, the not-yet-funded “Step 2” of Typhoon-EK theoretically envisions procuring escort jamming pods—ones presumably lighter than the present option, and which could fit under Typhoon’s outboard wing pylons. This wouldn’t occur until after 2030, so defense analysts aren’t optimistic that it would come through. One other solution could possibly be developing a single larger jamming pod, which might come on the expense of only one fuel tank on the centerline rack, but still leave room for 2 inboard fuel tanks.
Luck argues that that is “the perfect they might whip up short notice without either buying more F-35 or buying Growler. It’s a blatant industrial alternative bypassing the needs of the service.” British defense journalist Gabriele Molinelli characterised the Typhoon-EK as “watered down” on social media, attributable to the failure to seek out a strategy to mount larger jamming pods.
Germany previously appeared inclined to procure American Super Hornet and Growler jets as an alternative of developing an electronic attack Typhoon variant. But they then reversed an earlier policy by procuring 35 American F-35 stealth jets to take over conventional and nuclear strike duties from Tornadoes. Though F-35 Block 4s have sensors applicable to SEAD missions and the numerous advantage of being stealth aircraft, Germany then decided to fund the event of Typhoon-EK anyway, which is slated for certification by 2030.
The Typhoon-EK is less ambitious than earlier concept art, which depicts a two-seater equipped with three Hensoldt jamming pods and British Spear cruise missiles.
Besides being in high demand for conventional warfare, electronic attack jets can be vital to Germany should they ever try and employ the B61 tactical nuclear gravity bombs. These were allocated to the country by the U.S. to be utilized in event of an apocalyptic nuclear conflict, and should be released very near their targets.
Arming Typhoon for an electrical battlefield
Electronic attack jets typically have two person crews—the pilot focuses on flying and the back-seater concentrates on the intricacies of electronic warfare. The Typhoon-EK’s single-seat configuration might amount to a step back in effectiveness, but Airbus is seemingly counting on a brand new onboard AI system (by defense startup Helsing) to rapidly analyze radar data mid-mission and suggest appropriate defensive countermeasures to the pilot. That would reduce the burden of concurrently flying the plane, detecting threats, and employing EW systems and anti-radiation missiles.
The job of actively knocking out hostile radars will fall to American-built AGM-88E Advanced Antiradiation Guided Missiles (AARGM). These weapons home in on the source of radar emissions traveling at nearly 3 times the speed of sound and stay on the right track even when the radar is switched off, as operators are prone to do after they see missiles racing towards them.
Germany originally procured roughly 1,000 older AGM-88B Block IIIB missiles for its Tornado ECRs. Finally, in 2019, the country’s defense budget committee approved the acquisition of 178 AGM-88Es (plus eight training missiles and other ground-based systems) from the U.S. for 105 million euros, with production mostly undertaken in Germany by Diehl Defense. The AARGM has a variety of as much as 92 miles when launched from high altitude (or 15 miles when released by a low-flying aircraft) and is designed to shred radar antennas with its proximity-fused, 145-pound fragmentation warhead.
This AGM-88E retains prior models’ latest GPS navigation and home-on-jammer capability, while adding a millimeter-wave radar seeker enabling detection and tracking of moving targets. It also includes a terrain image-mapping reference library and inertial navigation systems to enhance accuracy within the cruise phase, and a satellite datalink to transmit photos of the goal just prior to missile impact.
A bigger-diameter extended-range (max 186 miles) variant—the AGM-88G AARGM-ER—can also be available, but Germany has yet to acquire it.
The Typhoon-EK’s electronic wizardry will primarily come courtesy of Swedish company Saab, and its Arexis family of modular electronic warfare systems. This features a digital radar-warning receiver (RWR) and electrooptical Missile Approaching Warning System (MAWS), providing all-aspect coverage for self-defense against each radar- and infrared-guided missiles. Wingtip pods may even house an interferometric Emitter Location System to seek out the precise location of hostile radars and retain that information, even when the radars are turned off.
But Arexis’s key items are two sorts of jammers: small self-defense jammers on the wing-tip, in addition to two larger EAJP pods (weighing 770-pounds) optionally carried underwing—the latter of which apparently won’t initially be featured on Typhoon-EK.
Arexis incorporates each internal L-Band and S-Band solid-state Gallium-Nitride AESA antennas, in addition to external VHF and UHF antennas. They work in tandem with passive ultrawide-band digital receivers that feature Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) tech, which allows the system to detect and memorize the frequency and bandwidth of hostile emitters. That not only generates invaluable intel, but enables the jammer to rapidly mimic those signals for deception purposes—blaring out misleading velocity and vector returns, and even creating false ‘ghost’ targets indistinguishable from real ones to hostile receivers.
Saab’s promotional materials claim that Arexis will be directed to suppress multiple targeted radars concurrently, and that it’s effective against large, low-band radars (with some potential to detect stealth aircraft), the X-Band radars on fighter and anti-air missiles, and the massive radars on early-warning planes like Russia’s A-50 Mainstay.
But it surely is unclear exactly which capabilities don’t overlap between the wingtip pods and the more powerful EAJP pods. As EAJPs are offered to complement the Gripen-E’s wingtip pods, it is obvious that the latter are insufficient in and of themselves for electronic escort missions.
Germany’s need for SEAD
The constrained impact of Russia’s manned airpower on the war in Ukraine has highlighted that even Ukraine’s old (but admittedly quite a few) Soviet air defenses could prevent Russia’s non-stealth warplanes from venturing deep into Ukrainian airspace. And people deeper targets—like supply and reinforcement convoys, trains, or command centers and depots—are arguably those against which air power is best.
Though Russia doesn’t have dedicated electronic attack planes, it does eliminate many electronic warfare pods and radar-homing missiles—ones that its Su-35S fighters and Su-34 fighter-bombers could employ within the SEAD mission. And Russia did attempt to knock out Ukraine’s air defenses early within the war, particularly destroying many large, immobile radars. But Russia’s effort failed, largely attributable to Ukraine successfully moving most of its mobile systems on the onset to dodge the initial strike
Russia’s experience highlights that a considerable and sustained SEAD effort is required to enable non-stealth fighters to penetrate hostile airspace with dense air defenses. Even stealth fighters profit from SEAD support, as their stealth isn’t strictly impervious.
In principle, the Typhoon-EK could attract interest from other operators of Typhoon jets—most notably Italy (which is able to retire its Tornado ECRs by 2025), Spain, the UK, and/or Saudi Arabia (though, for now Germany, is unwilling to authorize sales to Saudi Arabia attributable to human rights concerns.) If that’s the case, such customers may insist on installing different systems than those Germany settled on for the Typhoon-EK.
Germany itself might consider converting additional Typhoon-EKs if the primary order proves satisfactory. In spite of everything, within the event of a significant conflict with Russia and its deep arsenal of surface-to-air missile systems, demand for electronic attack support would greatly exceed what 15 jets can provide. The numerous non-stealth Typhoon jets planned to serve beyond the 2060s would require support to conduct penetrating strikes or offensive counter-air missions in a significant conflict.
Germany can also be pursuing a wider-reaching electronic warfare program called IuWES, which incorporates proposals for converting ten Airbus cargo A400M cargo planes to hold powerful stand-off jammers for use for disabling low-band early warning radars and communications. Unlike electronic attack jets, these larger, slower aircraft would perform their mission at standoff distance—ideally beyond the effective reach of long-range anti-aircraft missiles. This operating concept is becoming riskier, as Russia has increasingly begun to utilize R-37M air-to-air missiles in combat over Ukraine, which have a theoretical max range exceeding 200 miles.
Ensuring that Step 2 is funded, in an effort to obtain a viable escort jamming pod, can also be vital for the Typhoon-EK to copy the capabilities of the due-for-retirement Tornado-ECRs. Without that, the modified Eurofighters will lack a key arrow of their quiver that the Tornado ECRs they’re replacing already had.