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Europeans join hands to build fighters
Published on Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 23:30, Updated on Sat, Apr 07, 2007 at 21:44 in 
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The Cold War saw the United States and Russia push the frontiers of aircraft technology.
But now the Europeans are pushing hard as well. In fact the Eurofighter Typhoon built jointly by Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK is fighter technology at its cutting edge best.
Top fighter pilots had to go right back to flying school to master the Eurofighter.
Eurofighter Typhoon, the new breed of the Warplane uses no propeller or piston engine for power. And it isn't made of wood, cloth or too much metal.
It's made in fact from, mostly man made, carbon fibre composites and everything about the plane is revolutionary.
The Eurofighter Typhoon, is the culmination of over ten years of development and a hundred years of knowledge. Rolling off the production line the Eurofighter is Europe's latest frontline warplane.
In Germany experienced pilots have been sent back to school to learn to fly their latest Warplane. Those pilots will fly many hours on computer simulators before they're allowed anywhere near the cockpit of their new warplane.
"This simulator in particular is used for cockpit familiarisation, basic instrument flying, emergency procedures and intercept procedures," said Simulator Trainer Matthias "Tarzan" Würker.
"We start out here to train the first Eurofighter pilots of the German Air Force so its not only a training for them to fly the aircraft its also a training for them to become familiar with the simulator so they can train later on students in the simulator," he added.
After hundreds of simulated missions on the ground, the pilots finally got ready for their first flight. And so too is the Eurofighter, that joined its first active squadron here in Germany.
And when the cockpit shuts, man and machine come together in unprecedented unison. Computer flies the plane. The man flies the mission.
(A CNN-IBN Nat Geo presentation)
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