This scenario is introduced in post Scenario 3 Defensive counter air in Arctic.

Typhoon is the clearest Air Superiority platform of the HX-hopefulls, and has speed, agility and altitude advantage to all other candidates in Finnish fighter replacement program. THe EUrofighter Typhoon would be a pan European choice as it is in use in most premier Airforces in Europe: Great Britain, Germany and Italy. This assures that Typhoon will be in use with the proposed European 6th gen fighters in 2050’ies.

Typhoon is Air superiority optimized multi-role fighter which would give a great reach in time&space continuum for Finland. On the downside is that EF is a bit on expensive side both to procure and to fly. Armaments are the same for most HX candidates, so no big differences in there.

I simulated the scenario 5 times and did the video on sixth time. As you can see from the tally of losses it is quite hard to keep the Air defense and monitoring bubble intact in Northern Finland and Lapland against offensive operation, with four ship on initial patrol. But it is not totally undoable either. Limiting factor for success seems mostly to be the amount of A2A ordnance

With 6 Meteor 2 ASRAAM carried the staying power of Typhoons is limited by ordnance. One could do MUCH more harm to attaking VVS, if one had option to carry 10-12 Meteors on takeoff, with just internal fuel, or possibly one extra tank as the staying power is not limited by amout of AvGas carried, but amount of Foxes under wings. (I’m trying to keep this real, and not to meddle with the database.)

As mentioned, I did 5 runs on simulation and made a table of the results. Basics of each run was the same: VVS has it’s assets up, and Finns are launching two pairs to guard neutrality. Even though Typhoon is the fastest burner in HX competition even it doesn’t have time enough to zoom all over Lapland and be everywhere at once: Even Typhoon needs some time to come into Meteor range of red fighters to be able to fire. Fighters move fast, so time to react is always short.

Also, the KAVA radars (Thompson Rangemasters) are mounted on wheeled chassis, so after the shooting starts they should be able to pull stakes and change positions, in real life. But this simulation software doesn’t quite give that option here. As the Meteors are always fired two at a target from far range, you seldom get to re target the missiles if you score hits on 1st missile of the salvo. So that tends to push the kill ratio down (even if you get perfect score of 1 splash per salvo of two, your hit rate is still going to be 50%)

In the video things went pretty surprisingly: One Typhoon got hit but managed to return to base. This happened in a fur ball near Kajaani on the late stages of the video. Another gets his and is lost also. Finns also lost two radars, but managed also to down most VVS air assets (21).

So Eurofighter typhoon gave a good showing again.

Next up will be the Lockheed Martin F-35 on the weekend.