Eurofighter Typhoon

The Eurofighter Typhoon is a European twin-engine, canard-delta multirole fighter developed jointly by the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain through the multinational Eurofighter consortium formed from BAE Systems, Airbus and Leonardo, entering operational service in 2003 after a long, politically contentious development program stretching back to the 1980s. Designed originally to emphasize air superiority against Warsaw Pact fighters before evolving to add a substantial ground-attack capability as the Cold War ended, the Typhoon combines a highly agile, relaxed-stability airframe with an advanced radar and sensor suite, and it has since been exported to Austria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar in addition to its four founding partner nations. Typhoons flown by Royal Air Force and other partner-nation pilots have taken part in NATO air-policing missions and combat operations including the 2011 intervention in Libya, and continued upgrades have kept the aircraft in frontline production alongside newer fifth-generation designs.