Vulcan updating?

[Evening Star]

On another site I read (actually to with MG cars, but you know how discussions get out of hand) the claim was made that it would have been possible to update the Vulcan (as done with the B52) instead of retiring it - updated avionics, ejection seats for the back seat crew and so on. Is this right? And if so, why then did we retire the Vulcan? MoD stupidity, short sighted Government thinking or American pressure?

Now just a theoretical question of course :( .

[oxford blue]

Proposals to fit ejector seats for the navigators and Air Electronics Officer were considered throughout the aircraft's life - not just as it was approaching retirement - but it was just not considered viable.

When the aircraft original design was laid down, ejection seats were still new and untried and none of the crew seats had an ejection facility. After it was too late to change the basic design, it was generally accepted that ejection seats were reliable and were here to stay and it was possible, because of the structure of the canopy, to go back and re-design ejector seats for the pilots. However, because of strength and other structural requirements of the fuselage over the rear-seaters, it was just not possible to do it. There was never any suggestion that the pilots were considered more worth saving than the navs and AEO - it's just that it was feasible to retro-fit the one, but not the other.

The avionics were very good for their day and were also continuously updated through the aircraft's life. They were more advanced (for the strike role) than either the Phantom or the Buccaneer. Radar improvements were fitted and Terrain Following Radar was added. There was also a good Electronic Warfare jamming suite which also received mid-life updating. The next aircraft in British service to have avionics which were a significant improvement on the Vulcan was the Tornado.

No, it was the performance that finally meant that it had to go. The aircraft was just not fast enough at low level to survive in a heavy Soviet low-level defence environment, which was what the threat at the time was perceived to be. And there was nothing that could have been done about that. So it was probably right to retire it at the time.

Interestingly, the next time that the RAF was involved in bombing was the Gulf War. And rather than low-level pentrations, the tactics became to destroy the enemy missile defences in the early sorties and then fly above the anti-aircraft gunfire, at medium level. So perhaps the Vulcan would have been useful after all, as it could certainly carry rather more than the Tornados and carried it rather further!