factory, near Madrid on May 27, 2004.
They were assigned to 113 Escuadrón (113
Squadron) of Ala 11 (11th Wing) based in
Morón, near Seville, entering service with
the identi cation serial code pre x C.16
( ghter number 16). This is the
Operational Conversion Unit
(OCU), and has trained
pilots from several other
nations, including
Germany and Saudi
Arabia. At the time
of writing, all but
six of the Typhoons
ordered had been
delivered and
distributed between
111 and 113 Sqns from
11th Wing, and 141 and
142 Sqns from 14th Wing,
based at Albacete. They are
set to be joined by 112 Sqn, the
second operational unit at Morón.
The rst frontline Typhoon mission in
Spanish hands took place on February
8, 2007, when four aircraft assigned to
the 11th Wing and a similar number of
Spanish Hornets, provided the air defence
for the NATO summit in Seville. They were
supported by a NATO Boeing E-3A AWACSand MIM-23 Hawk anti-aircraft missiles.
After this, the Spanish Typhoons became
part of NATO’s integrated air defence
system, carrying out quick reaction alert
(QRA) missions from Morón. In February
2010, 10,000 hours were reached
with the aircraft type, followed
by 25,000 in February 2014.
The rst operational
deployment outside
Spain took place
between January
1 and May 4, 2015.
Four aircraft from the
11th Wing deployed
to Ämari in Estonia, to
ful l a Baltic Air Police
(BAP) role, which
was known in Spain as
Amber Detachment. They
were Tranche 2 aircraft tted
with the infrared search and track
(IRST) system.
The rst scramble took place on January
19 when two Spanish ghters took off to
identify an aircraft that didn’t have a ight
plan, had its transponder turned off and
was unresponsive to air traffic control. They
reached the suspect aircraft, identi ed it
as a Russian ELINT Ilyushin Il-20 Coot,passed the information to the command
centre and escorted it out of the area.
The Typhoons performed 339 sorties that
were a mixture of operational patrol ights
and training missions. They intercepted
Russian aircraft on more than ten occasions
during their rotation.
Spanish Typhoons were sent to the region
again the following year in an operation knownas the Vilkas detachment. During their four
month stay at Šiauliai in Lithuania, the ghters
carried out just over 300 ights, clocking
up more than 450 hours in the air, with 14
scrambles intercepting 25 Russian aircraft.
Not a single mission was cancelled
for technical reasons during either Baltic
detachment, which says much about the
aircraft, skills of the maintenance personnel,
and the air force overall.http://www.aviation-news.co.uk 21A Typhoon from Ala 14 after landing in Lithuania during a snowstorm on the rst day of the Vilkas detachment. Spanish Air ForceA two-seat Ala 11 Typhoon taxiing at Gando, in the Canary Islands. All photos Rodrigo Rodríguez Costa unless stated“Not a single mission
was cancelled for
technical reasons
during either Baltic
detachment”.
20-24_spanish_typhoonsDC.mfDC.mfDC.mf.indd 21 02/05/2018 10:56