Tempest central to the UK RAF’s future fleet

With the UK Royal Air Force (RAF) banking on the success of the Tempest programme to fulfil its defence aerospace requirements for the second half of the century, defence observers are keen to see where the platform will fit into the future line-up of the fleet

Billed in the mid-1980s as a state-of-the-art fighter capable of outmanoeuvring the nimblest of Soviet MiGs all the while matching American technological prowess, the consortium behind Eurofighter set itself a daunting industrial and engineering challenge. Yet bristling with the latest in high-tech wizardry and software, Eurofighter’s staunchest supporters considered the aircraft as akin to possessing ‘tomorrow’s fighter today’.

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The old and the new: a Eurofighter Typhoon sits next to a concept model of Tempest, a vision of the UK’s future combat aircraft, at BAE Systems in Warton. BAE Systems

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