3 Putt
Thanks for the info and for making it clearer. Please excuse me not giving away who I am as I have a bit more service left in me.
I always wanted to be in the RAF in the late 60s/early 70s - Vulcan would certainly have been on my preference list. I did some AVRO time on BBMF along with some of the ex-V Force types; all of them great mates.
Tornado GR4 given a hard time?
Going back to the start of the thread, the GR1 was finished by the time Gulf War 1 came along - the poor old F3 was nowhere near ready. Tasking it to fly CAPs on the Saudi/Iraq border within a week of Saddam going into Kuwait was nuts - no defensive aids, a RADAR which would not more times than it would and a missile that got about 3 miles ahead of you prior to reaching the merge!
That is why the F3 took so much banter early on; once again we accepted a British aircraft into service that just wasn't finished. Even by the time Stage 1+ came along (chaff/flares and a better RADAR but no self protection jammer) we still couldn't be risked on sweep. We didn't get a decent jammer until half way through the Balkans in the mid 90s. After that things were good but the reputation of the F3 was tarnished and took another 5 years to undo. The GR never had to go through this and that is why it has a deserved reputation of doing well at what it has turned its hand to.
On the subject of reputation, we nearly made the same mistake with Typhoon recently by sending it when it wasn't quite ready. What's the common denominator? An aerospace company in the North West of the UK failing to deliver (F2/F3, GR5 and MRA4 - need I say more?) and air officers keen to get their products "blooded" so they get given a seat on the Board of the very same company.
The B Word