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Cover Story
The beginnings
Among them is Karlheinz Koch. The managing
director of Turbo-Union, the consortium
managing the Tornado’s RB199 engine, had
long been working with MTU and, before
that, served in the GAF as a pilot and wing
commander. He remembers the early days:
“In the late fifties, the decision to procure
the U.S. Starfighter and its J79 engine set
the stage for the extensive, close type of
cooperation between the German engine
industry, the GAF and the Bundeswehr
Technical Center 61.” He goes on to add:
“The General Electric engine was an inspired,
robust design of extraordinary supersonic
capabilities. In joint GAF-industry testing, it
underwent various technical modifications to
become the J79-J1K variant.” The next version,
the J79-17A, then powered the F-4
Phantom. Here, again, military-civil team-
Military pilots called the Starfighter with its revolutionary J79 engine the ‘Porsche of the skies’.
work accomplished the feat of doubling
maintenance intervals through jointly
achieved material optimizations and design
improvements.
The next aircraft to appear on the European
scene was the Tornado, the first multinational
multi-role combat aircraft. Its engine, the
RB199, again was an international effort. The
participating nations Germany, the U.K. and
Italy bundled their activities under the roof of
Turbo-Union. “Its Starfighter and F-4
Phantom engine background predestined
MTU for a major development role in the
Tornado engine program,” remembers Karl-
Josef Bader, who too had done a stint in the
GAF. He supervises the RB199 program at
MTU and knows the Tornado engine inside
out. At the time of its entry into service in
1984, Bader served as a maintenance officer
with the GAF. “I was able to apply the lessons
learned in those days and bring them to bear
in the Eurofighter EJ200 logistic support
effort.”
For the GAF, the F-4 Phantom II became a workhorse that because of its robustness could be deployed in
multiple roles.
Cooperative model of engine
maintenance
The Eurofighter/Typhoon is the most advanced
aircraft in its class. It’s a four-nation
product, with Germany, the U.K., Italy and
Spain jointly building aircraft and engine.
Each partner contributes its most advanced
technologies to the concerted effort. From
the engine maintenance aspect, new trails
are being blazed as well. In Germany, MTU
and the GAF have launched an industry-military
cooperative model of engine maintenance,
where the engines are still being
maintained in a shared effort, but where that
effort, formerly distributed, has now been
co-located at a single site: MTU’s Munich
facility. For three years already, GAF personnel
and MTU staff have here been working
shoulder to shoulder under the industrial
leadership of MTU. The advantages are readily
apparent: cost and time savings are
achieved by pooling resources and reducing
inventory capacities.
The J79, too, now belongs to the family of engines
maintained under the cooperative model. Its repair
continues to be done in Munich.
The EJ200 was the first engine to be maintained
under the cooperative model.
“The new concept is a win-win situation,”
emphasizes Martin Majewski, head of MTU
customer support: “The GAF detaches maintenance
mechanics to MTU, but also young
officers with a graduate degree in engineering.
They’re assigned to program control and
product support. The military personnel
work side by side with MTU staff on many
complex tasks, such as spare parts management
and requirements forecasting, or damage
investigation and product tracking. They
stimulate us in our work, communicating
their experience and practical know-how. In
return, they help the GAF maintain its engine
know-how.”
The cooperative model has been so successful
that it is currently being expanded to
include further engines. According to
Weingartner, “we’ll also be repairing the
RB199 (Tornado), the J79 (Phantom) and the
RR250-C20 (PAH-1 helicopter)”. While the
EJ200 and J79 will be repaired at MTU’s
Munich facility, work on the other two
The Tornado’s RB199 engine will now be repaired
in MTU’s Erding branch facility.
engines will occur at MTU’s Erding branch
facility in future. “This type of cooperation
benefits the armed forces economically,
makes sure stringently needed military capabilities
are preserved and helps secure the
jobs of 60 civilian GAF employees,” appreciated
Dr. Jörg Kaempf, the defense ministry’s
director general of armaments, last November
when the expanded maintenance model
was inked. Ulrich Ostermair, cooperative
model project manager at MTU, is emphatic
that “the cooperative model marks the culmination
of the partners’ trusting cooperative
relationship”.
The Tornado with its twin RB199 engines currently forms the backbone of the GAF fleet.
Coming in from the cold
When after the German unification the
former German Democratic Republic’s
(GDR) troops were integrated into the
West-German military, the shifting
wind blew a cold-war phantom into the
GAF’s purview: the MiG-29, a Russian
fighter bomber prodigy the West had
so far known mostly from hearsay. The
GDR’s most advanced combat aircraft
easily matched the better fighters the
West could field at the time. At the
GAF, the MiG-29 became the shining
star of its fighter arsenal.
All MiG-29s were surrendered to the
GAF at Preschen and until retired served
in the “Steinhoff Fighter Wing 73” at
Laage near Rostock. Pilots of Western
air forces were hot to try the MiG to
see how good it really was. Their consensus
was that the spooky bird
indeed had deadly talons, and with
what they had seen they were glad
they never had to seriously go head to
head with it.
The Russian fighter wasn’t retired until
the Eurofighter was fielded, initially
again at the Laage air base. 22 of the
MiG-29s were leased under a Nato aid
program to Poland, where they’re still
flying today.
For additional information, contact
Odilo Mühling
+49 89 1489-2698
Further information is available on the
Internet at: www.mtu.de/report
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