Well BAE refer to the aircraft interchangeable as the Agile Combat Aircraft and the EAP. Furthermore they also say its directly developed from it in the book. In fact, they say that the forward fuselage is essentially that of the P.110 (I think, I need to double-check).
EDIT: ACA not P.110…
Also the assertion that the EAP never had any considerations to be armed is now unequivocally false because BAE literally have some designs in here for an armed production ACA/EAP.
So we rephrase the suggestion from EAP being a precursor Typhoon, to the EAP being its own independent aircraft and its own theoretical loadout like the Yak-141 got in game
Well ACA was one of of the precursor concepts for Eurofighter so that tracks. The front fusalage being from P.110 is interesting as that was the jag replacement and looks nothing like the EAP front end
(Some pictures of ACA and P.110)
ACA
P.110
Yeah i got the P.110 and ACA confused, which is why I mentioned in brackets, its been a very good read so far and I’m only an ⅛ into it.
It also helps that I can ask any questions directly to people who have worked on it. But theres so many anograms.
Im just gonna communicate anything I find in pictures make sure I don’t make mistakes.
Oh yes engineers like acronyms and abbreviations of things especially having two things with the same acornym
After another 100 pages, i’ve got some new finds, gonna keep it to the facts and leave out any arguements for or against:
The EAP was originally fitted with a Tornado fin with the heat exchanger removed and the air intake for the APU removed also, however complete with RWR housing. This was only changed after an ACX engineer from Dassault visited, realised it was a Tornado fin, and remarked that it was noticeable, leading to its removal in haste prior to official unveiling so the public wouldn’t know the full extent of the recycling.
The EAP originally had provisions for at least carriage of RWR (the same as Tornado, and extra space in the avionics bay -presumably for recycled Tornado avionics)
The EAP had an MFD inspired from the F-16 (which had its MFD made by BAE), it had several combat specific modes.
There are a number of other aerodynamic provisions made for the use of weapons (all BAE products for marketing reasons) in order to reassure the UK Gov, for example, the ASRAAM’s were moved from wingtip mounting such as seen on the F-16, to underneath the wingtip in accordance with the ASRAAM thickness and to provide space for the fins, this also resulted in a ‘French’ wingtip.
BAE also experimented with dropping the ASRAAM’s in the wind-tunnel to see if it would cause harm to the aerodynamics but due to revised wingtips, this wasn’t an issue, asymmetric carriage was also not an issue.
Those are some of the key points.
Oh and a little bonus fact. The wings on Gripen are made using essentially a plastic moulding similar to blowing glass, developed and experimented on by BAE, Gripen Prototype (and I think production wings) therefore were made by BAE, a proxy of this is that BAE offered to make a set of EAP style, cranked delta wings, for the Gripen of which there are some designs. For several reasons, including domestic industry, Sweden went with the standard swept delta and not the crank.
This information will make a lot of people happy myself included as a new Brit player
I wouldn’t class it as a win yet, there’s still a few sticking points, but I’ve checked just about every article available on the internet lots of this I didn’t find.
Some of this information is available on places like secret projects forum, but naturally without a source. Lots of it so far is entirely available in the book. There’s another book I’m looking at getting a hold of too.
Either way, I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I’ll probably copy this all over to my EAP post (likely after rewriting it with sources, screenshots, pictures etcetera).
Further confirmed the EAP was originally called the ‘Experimental Aircraft Programme for the Agile Combat Aircraft’, this isn’t sourced from the book though its word of mouth I can’t prove it (credibly at-least). Adds more weight to the ACA relevancy.
EAP pylons holding ASRAAM are modelled after the at the time concept for the actual ASRAAM pylons, they were not further developed in terms of shape from those seen on EAP.
Of course there is jo win until gaijin gives in, but it just shows that there a light af the end of the tunnel and hope
Yep, and even if they continue to say no, if (when) they add the SU-47, then there’s already a collection of information on EAP for them to model an EAP from.
Honestly, I think even if you found proof that that the plane had secretly flown sorties with weapons, GJN still won’t consider adding this vehicle. It would give us something good rather than a Tornado/Harrier with AMRAAMs.
Believe me I know, but this is also just a good opportunity to share research of something i’m interested in. My love of aerospace, and more specifically the Eurofighter, it massive in terms of my motivation for this, we will obviously see a Eurofighter someday but part of the issue is how hard Britain is to grind and although i have top tier Germany, i’d like to fly a brit EF.
I also am more interested in EAP then EF atm so there’s that. We shall see, since my last update ive had several breakthroughs.
I see no reason for the EAP not to be added at this point to be honest, if theres really no other choices that people can be happy with the EAP is the best option since its domestic and not a Harrier
Im really not sure that helps your argument for an armed EAP, ACA is part of the program absolutely but it doesn’t lend any crednece to an armed EAP as it was just part of the concept phase.
ACA was intended to enter service in '89 which wasn’t realised and delayed until '91, the German Reunification caused a diplomatic stir which ended up with the restructure and re-evaluation of the Eurofighter project (for instance, Germany had previously wanted thrust vectoring, this was axed as now it wasnt going to be WVR fighting but BVR) which is when the name was finally changed. Politically this is much the same as the YAK-141 being cancelled in light of the disolving of the USSR.
It lends weight to what I think is the assertion of the book that the BAE and MBB prototypes were supposed to be refitted with armament hence the cavities for Tornado avionics, RWR and the weapons selection.
It more diffentiates it from being an EF predecessor (which has its own prototypes DA.) to being a prototype of the ACA that never got round to weapons implementation but had the intent and means. The EF is obviously majorly revised and new airframe shape, whereas ACA was always intended to be off the shelf as a P.110 follow-on it was literally supposed to be a Tornado ADV but with a fighters airframe given now the Saudi and British interests aligned, plus it required minimal redevelopment of existing industry.
Given that and the marked means to which they’d alter the airframe for weapons carriage, weapons cavities, mockups and some more thats why I think its relevant.
The EAP was originally intended to be literally a flyable version of the ACA you can see in mockups, then Germany and Italy withdrew funding, BAE was restructured and the aircraft was altered to be more off the shelf, which then actually yielded benefits (single fin had less supersonic drag than the twins the Germans had wanted).
I don’t know, you might be right, it took me 20 days to write the last EAP post, this one has a time limit because eventually I’ve got to return the book but as of now I’m just collecting information. Like the part about the Tornado RWR I wouldn’t have even thought of.
GJN writes off the EAP because it was a ‘demonstrator never intended to be a combat vehicle’
Now we’ve seen that it’s the concept version of a fighter prototype that was never realised. Essentially the same as the yak-141.
Rules are for thee, not me.
In fairness 141 was slated to enter service, but just never realised, EAP was slated to enter service but due the complete programme restructure into Eurofighter, EAP would never be realised. But it got close which is my point.
Gotta say thats a bit of a leap, i think thats got more to do with the fact they wallace and grommited the EAP together from parts they had avaliable on a shoe string of a budget.
This is the bit your gonna have a real problem to prove as so far theres been absolutely no evidence of this.
Yes the factor of the singular tail was entirely down to it being an off-the-shelf solution from Tornado, as were many other decisions, but after Germany left, the EAP was designed to be the first of the UK’s AST403 specification aircraft, like DA.2 was for Eurofighter.
It is definitely the biggest hurdle, I’ve got some bits and pieces, but its not tied together, who knows, maybe it never will be.
Here’s a little bit about the avionics package:
