BAE Systems Exploring Typhoon And CCA Control Concepts
WARTON, England—BAE Systems is conceptualizing how to control and direct collaborative combat aircraft in battle using the wide-area display planned for the Eurofighter Typhoon.
As part of its work developing the fighter’s new cockpit layout and associated unified mission computer, the company has been trialing approaches that would allow the pilot to command the uncrewed systems without a significant increase in workload.
The work emerges as air forces around the world begin to explore the operation of uncrewed adjuncts alongside crewed fighters to provide combat persistence, electronic warfare and intelligence-gathering capabilities as well as boosting air power mass.
Individual control of a single collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) would take up “quite a lot of capacity for one person” to fight in a complicated air picture, Andrew Mallery-Blythe, BAE Systems’ Typhoon operational requirements manager, told journalists during company briefings here in late June.
The concept control system currently being tested in ground-based simulators here would allow the Eurofighter pilot to command individual CCAs. But Mallery-Blythe showed journalists how four CCAs could be commanded with just a few button switches on the hands-on throttle-and-stick controls to conduct their own “sort” of adversaries by drawing a kill box onto a moving map display. Having received the commands, the CCAs decide—in combination with a new, unified mission computer also planned for the Eurofighter—which targets that each should engage. Once the sort is complete and targets allocated, the human pilot gives the final approval for weapons release.
“We are letting the drones take the strain,” Mallery-Blythe said, drawing on an old British Rail slogan telling passengers to “let the train take the strain.”
“This is not about the CCA platform but using a combination of the [large-area] display and unified mission computer to send compliant Link 16 messages to get the CCAs to carry out any number of things,” he explained.
BAE Systems says the work is part of wider efforts to accelerate CCA technology by exploring the best way to control them. The company strongly believes that the introduction of the wide-area display and the unified mission computer, which is 200 times more powerful than the mission computers currently installed on the aircraft, is key to enabling these capabilities.
BAE Systems was contracted in 2024 to begin technology maturation in support of the Eurofighter’s long-term evolution, but it is not currently a program of record. Plans today call for installing the two elements in a second stage of the Phase 4 Enhancements (P4E) upgrade program, to be called P4E(B). P4E(A) is best known as the upgrade that will introduce both the Mk.1 and Mk.2 active, electronically scanned array radars and task-based radar operation. Mallery-Blythe said that operation of the new radars will be significantly improved with the introduction of the wide-area display, increasing situational awareness in crowded airspace in particular.
He noted that the three 6 X 6-in. displays in the current Eurofighter cockpit make it difficult to understand the “big picture” because pilots must constantly look down, zoom in and out of the display, and open menus.
BAE’s approach to CCA operation is platform- and communication-system-agnostic. Still, the company last year tested use of Link 16 to send commands to a CCA during trials with QinetiQ.
The company’s briefings took place ahead of the UK government’s announcement that it planned to spend £300 million ($400 million) on a CCA program that could field a demonstration by 2030.
Chris Moon, BAE’s Typhoon future capability delivery director, told journalists the company was engaging with the UK customer on how to get the technology and concepts on a “proper footing.”
The UK is not alone in exploring teaming CCAs with Eurofighter. Airbus Defense and Space acquired a pair of Kratos Valkyrie CCAs to trial technologies to support the German Air Force’s interest in fielding a CCA capability by the end of the decade. The company has proposed installing a data link that could be fitted into a Rafael Litening 5 targeting pod, which could be more signature-managed than Link 16 commands, Airbus officials told Aviation Week in May.
