The Eurofighter history goes back to the seventies when British Aerospace and German MBB teamed up to a joint Anglo-German co-operative study , named the European Combat Aircraft (ECA) was launched. Both companies tried to gain the support from their respective governments but budgetary constraints leaded to a limited support. Thus, to share the cost of this project, the support from other nations was needed and so in 1980, French Dassault joined the project.
In parallel, BAE was studying its own project, named P.110 which was a twin engines and tail aircraft featuring a cranked delta-canard wing and side mounted intakes. At the time, main need for UK was a multi-role aircraft capable of replacing the Phantom and the Jaguar.
BAE P.110 Copyright BAE Systems
