As far as I know, every country that bought the Eurofighter got an assembly line. Ours is/was at Manching (ETSI).
The companies build their nation’s assigned parts, ship them around, and get the other’s parts delivered to them, so every nation assembles their jets themselves.
Not sure if that is the only production facility, but the Eurofighter was / is built by BAe in Barton, UK. I was lucky enough once to fly their sim there. Cool does not begin to describe it…
Maybe that’s the situation with the F/A-18 too, and pumping up the accumulator the function of the lever. My memory could be faulty about it raising the canopy to enable startup.
BTW, the guy who explained this to me (doubtless correctly) was there on his bicycle too, with me talking to the attractive woman Naval officer who was flying the plane. She asked him if he’d flown one, and his answer was “yes, I have a little time in them”, and nothing further. He was commander of a squadron of them in actuality, now a recently retired airline captain, and also an inveterate Luscombe restorer and homebuilder.
Silvaire wrote:
for the pilot to pump the canopy up in the absence of external power
That reminds me of my days as a mechanic in the air force. The F-16 A fires up autonomously. The way it works is a precharged hydraulic accumulator starting the APU, which then starts the main engine. Sometimes though, for various reason, the accumulator has lost it’s charge. It then needs to be pumped up manually. Some 100 something strokes with a large lever, real heavy work out. And it’s not done by the pilot 
IIRC on the F/A-18 they have a robust looking drop down handle for the pilot to pump the canopy up in the absence of external power. With that accomplished one can climb in and get onboard power going.
Cool to have a Typhoon test pilot here!
I was once at Mojave Air/Space port (in a 172) and a fighter jet parked next to us. No equipment whatsoever. Perhaps he(or she) went for a 100$ burger?
Apparently Austria bought some „tranche 1“ eurofighters that are not very capable for their price tag.
Thread drift: I think this F35 air stair is neat engineering:
I’m guessing the government has a deal with Visa or MasterCard, so as to be used anywhere in the US where there’s a Jet-A pump.
Silvaire wrote:
They can also buy fuel there, using their magic government credit card
TOTAL or BP ?
Aaaaaahhhh…
The piece I read was
The airfield needs specific support to allow a Typhoon in and it’s not just about flying it and landing. Even a Typhoon going into another RAF station unsupported requires specific stuff. I watched an unsupported Typhoon display and then land at Odiham families day a couple of years ago. It sat idling for what seemed like 20 mins after taxing in simply because the onboard power to cool the brakes isn’t powerful enough without the engine running when external power isn’t available. If it had been shut down the onboard power would have been run down so it wouldn’t have been able to restart – or worse case that and the brakes erupting in flames. So a Typhoon on low fuel I’m assuming can’t land on a non Typhoon supported field without the recovery plan moving to…
