After speaking to a few old friends, it occurs to me that far from ‘over-egging’ the Jaguar pudding, I’ve actually been guilty of under-stating the type’s usefulness.
Training
Quite apart from keeping the cream of the RAF’s Fast Jet force current ‘in role’ – and with some of the capabilities and toys that the Typhoon has, or will be getting – retaining the Jaguar would have had a number of important advantages even if it did not deploy.
The Jaguar has been largely responsible for training Army FACs over the last 18 months, there are insufficient Harriers available and Tornado is ill-suited to this particular task. Whenever the Army need CAS training, the Jaguar is the platform of choice. I understand that the Army has already started to feel the impact of the Jaguar’s sudden withdrawal – since the Jaguar Force has had to pull out of Exercise Neptune Warrior which would have provided operationally vital training for soon-to-deploy FACs who have not yet undertaken any live control of fast jets.
The Army like the Jag, because, as one former Jagmate told me: “They know that we will turn-up and give them a first-class service, and not ring up an hour later to explain that the jets have broken.”
Every hour flown by a Jaguar is an hour that does not have to be flown (at significantly higher cost) by a Harrier or a Tornado. According to figures published in Hansard, a Jaguar is the cheapest RAF FJ to operate, and a Jaguar Squadron’s annual running costs are a fraction of those of other types. And it has to be said that with the increasing intensity of operations, the Harrier in particular is unlikely to make it until its planned OSD (which will almost certainly slip to the right as a result of JSF delays) without major structural work. This will be so costly as to have made retention of the Jaguar look like an absolute bargain.
Operational capabilities
In the light of the “Utterly, Utterly Useless” comments last year, it would seem to me that any platform capable of providing highly discriminatory close air support ought to be worth its weight in gold, even if air-to-ground payloads might be modest. And No.6 is highly proficient in CAS, and highly regarded by the units with which it has trained. All of the No.6 Squadron Jaguar pilots are fully practiced and proficient at both low and high angle strafe, and they fly an aircraft with a proven, operational 30-mm cannon.
The Jaguar can use IDM to get a nine line brief or target co-ordinates in and out of the cockpit reliably, accurately, and at speed, reducing the need for wingmen to be manually typing coordinates into the kit. Meanwhile the combination of the Jaguar’s HMS with the data-link provides a unique capability.
A Jaguar pilot can search for targets of opportunity, targets of unknown location or Time Sensitive Targets and, once found, can instantly generate accurate coordinates with a single stick-top button press using the HMS sightline, i.e. with no need to overfly the target.
These target coordinates can then be transmitted to the rest of the formation, or to a FAC or JSTARS. Wingmen get an alert in the HUD, and can then make two stick top selections to view it on the AMLCD. With one single button press, the wingman can then ‘drop’ the transmitted coordinates into his own INS and simultaneously send an ‘accept’ message back to the leader. Two further stick-top selections bring up steering to the target and weapons aiming cues.
In the recent exercises in the UAE the Jaguars practiced this capability against targets ranging from Toyota Landcruisers to inflatable Scuds and proved able to find a target and strike it (strafe being the attack option of choice – accurate and discriminatory) with four aircraft inside three minutes flat. In more complex terrain or where target identification is more difficult, you can allow an extra minute to permit a voice description of the target and its surrounding features!
Medium-level CAS would typically take upwards of 20 minutes trying to get ‘eyes-on’ to a target, depending upon the terrain and the FAC’s ability to describe the target, and still can for Harrier and Tornado mates. But the Jaguar pilot can simply plug the target coordinates into his kit, follow the HMS cueing and then confirm with the FAC that he is looking at the right target. A former Jag pilot estimated that they were typically ‘hot’ on target in less than five minutes, and that “No one else can do that.”
I believe that no other RAF aircraft could come close to this sort of capability against time sensitive targets – which would seem to be pretty relevant in current theatres! Perhaps some of our Harrier and GR4 brethren here on PPRuNe will confirm my suspicion that only the Jaguar can do this……..
The data-link also gives the Jaguar pilot the real-time positions of the rest of his formation onto his map display, greatly aiding Situational Awareness and target deconfliction.
Keeping pilots current in using these capabilities would seem to me to be of huge potential value for when Typhoon really starts to pick up an air-to-ground capability.
Deployment
And that’s without considering the potential usefulness of the Jaguar in current operations. Many of us have an old fashioned and out of date impression of the Jaguar’s capabilities – based on the pre GR3A standard aircraft and on the old 102 or 104 engine – as though the GR3A did not exist, and as though the 106 engine upgrade had not happened.
As a result, the whole ‘hot and high’ debate has bee littered with ill-informed comment.
The option to send the Jaguars to Kandahar was looked at very seriously before political considerations came to bear. The Harrier Force badly needs some breathing space, and contrary to much of the bollocks being spouted here and elsewhere, the Jaguar could have made a useful contribution in Afghanistan – though if it had done so, it would have been hugely politically embarrassing after the Force had been emasculated and reduced to a single squadron, and it would have made cutting the Jaguar more difficult to justify.
The absence of any radar or air threat in theatre means that the Jaguar would not need to carry overwing missiles in Afghanistan and could dispense with the underwing ALQ-101 ECM pod and Phimat chaff dispenser. (It also renders the obsolesecence of the Jag's RWR and ECM an irrelevance). With two tanks the Jaguar could carry a centerline TIALD or JRP and two CRV7 pods or two 1,000 lb bombs on the outboard underwing pylons, plus 150 rounds of 30-mm HE.
Of course, if the requirement is simply to tote as much iron as possible, the Jaguar is entirely inadequate - but if it's about delivering 'effect' with precision and discrimination, the Jaguar does it better than its rivals, so some of the criticism that's routinely offered is way off base.
The only modifications needed for the Jaguar to operate in Afghanistan were trialled on one aircraft - these involved the carriage of BOL-IR decoys in the overwing launch rails and the provision of a secure radio. The cost of such mods was insignificant because, as a mature platform, the Jaguar could be upgraded quickly and very cheaply without the expensive input of the Design Authority – as the original J96 and J97 upgrades proved.
The Harrier GR.Mk 7’s jaw-dropping STOVL capabilities are impressive, and nothing can beat a Harrier’s short-field performance, but there are ways in which the Jaguar is a MORE deployable aircraft. There have been examples of airfields that the Harrier can’t use (those massive intakes make it something of a FOD hoover) that the Jaguar can, while the Jaguar can deploy quickly and with a tiny logistics footprint.
When No.6 flew its farewell 12-ship formation on Friday, it did so without needing to use either of the reserve jets – and did so without its engineers having to work for weeks to ensure that it happened – that week had begun as just another working week. I'd like to see any other FJ unit put up a 12 ship with as little notice! And as if to prove that such serviceability and availability was not a 'flash in the pan' the Squadron had only recently brought all seven of the aircraft it deployed to the UAE home with zero support. In two consecutive days of three hops the unit returned without leaving jets scattered all over the Mediterranean, and the seven aircraft landed at Coningsby on time and serviceable.
Once the Americans repaired the airfield at Kandahar, the runway length available increased to 10 000 ft. And the bottom line is that that is more than enough for the Jaguar! After looking very carefully at the Jaguar’s performance it was established that the aircraft could take off and accelerate away safely from Kandahar (3,300 ft amsl) even at 45°C (making Kandahar on a hot day equivalent to about 6,000 ft under standard ISA conditions). A Kandahar take-off was actually simulated by climbing straight to 6,000 ft from take-off, slowing down to take-off speed again and selecting the airbrakes out to replicate stores drag. I’m told that the jet accelerated away just fine from this simulated take off.
It was calculated that the aircraft that would be able to take off with two tanks and two 1000lb bombs at temperatures of up to 35° C and could carry two tanks and a pair of CRV7 rocket pods at OATs of up to 45° C. By increasing the engine TGT by 25° C the aircraft could operate at OATs of up to 48 deg C and this was successfully trialled.
The only reason the Jaguar did not deploy to Afghanistan was that to do so would have made it impossible to retire the aircraft prematurely without awkward questions being asked. I find it astonishing, to be honest, that such cynical manipulation by the politicians has not been challenged, and I'm scandalised that certain senior officers have been complicit in the process.
It strikes me that PPRuNe has a particular responsibility to call those people out for this poor decision - or at least not to be complicit in it.