After five years of developing capabilities for the RAF’s frontline Typhoons, BT005, a development aircraft based at BAE Systems Warton, will now transfer to RAF Coningsby to join its frontline colleagues.

During its time at Warton, the jet has flown 350 test flights and gained over 400 hours of flight time. Initially loaned to BAE Systems for 18 months, the unique test programme proved so successful the loan was repeatedly extended until it reached the five year mark.

Pete Travis, BAE Systems’ Product Manager within the Typhoon Flight Development team, said, “BT005 has been operated as a shared asset between industry and the RAF and this has helped us to jointly develop new capabilities much quicker. In doing so, this jet played a key role in ensuring that the RAF could declare Typhoon’s Multi-Role capability, as planned, on 1 July 2008 – a key milestone for the Typhoon and the RAF.”

Wing Commander Dicky Presland, leader of the MOD’s Typhoon Combined Test Team that oversaw the programme, said it had been “colossally beneficial”. He added: “The customer gave up a very valuable asset, but the return has been phenomenal, and it has been a real ice breaker to form a very strong relationship between the UK prime industrial supplier and the core UK customer.”

The development programme has been such a success that a new Tranche 2 aircraft is planned to take BT005’s place at the end of 2009.

Source: Eurofighter