The Italian Air Force has flown a Eurofighter Typhoon in “Beast Mode” last week. And here are some interesting new photos.
As we have already reported, on Mar. 19, 2021, an Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare) Eurofighter Typhoon belonging to the 4° Stormo (Wing), based at Grosseto Air Base, flew with a full loadout that included four new GBU-48 bombs, 4x AIM-120 AMRAAMs, 2x IRIS-T missiles, 2x tanks and a Litening targeting pod. The configuration, dubbed “Italian Typhoon’s Beast Mode” in the posts the service published on its social media networks, is referred to as a “Full Load” configuration, according to an official statement released today, and is being tested for Swing Role missions (i.e. sorties where a multirole aircraft can quickly switch between an air-to-air and an air-to-ground mission thanks to weapons load and sensors which allow it to carry out both missions simultaneously).
Interestingly, as highlighted in the previous article, the photos released by the Aeronautica Militare show that while the bombs were inert, the missiles had the yellow stripes, meaning they were “live” weapons.
The mission flown last week, the first in this “Full Load”, was carried out both to test the handling of the aircraft with the full loadout and to provide the armament team on the ground the opportunity to validate the procedures developed to manage all the weapons used in this new configuration. In particular the new GBU-48 Enhanced Paveway II, a 1,000 lb (454 kg) Enhanced dual-mode (GPS and Laser guided) version of the GBU-16, also known as EGBU-16.
Along with the official release, the Italian Air Force has also made available additional shots of the “missiled up” F-2000A (as the single seat Eurofighters are designated in Italy).
For more details about the “road to the Italian Air Force Eurofighter in Swing Role”, I suggest you reading the story we have published last week that you can find here.
