BBC hype or Jaguar problem at Coltishall?

[newswatcher]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/3040137.stm

[eng1170]

Probably hype, especially given the amount of money just spent on upgrades, and lets face it, are we really going to see the Eurofighter when they say we will.....mmm, don't think so!!

Anyway, so what if they had to shutdown an engine, surely 1 donk on its own on one of these beasties is more than ample oomph!

;)

[Background Noise]

2 engines on these 'beasties' is hardly enough! 1 is a crisis.

[Training Risky]

I would wager that the quarter grounded are the same quarter which have recently been given the mk 106 Adour engine. This gives an extra 6 % dry thrust each side.

A Jag mate told me a few weeks ago that the extra weight of the exhaust negates the extra thrust produced. (Made of/with titanium I think he said.)

Its true that it is underpowered. They struggle to get airborne from Incirlik with a full load. (At Colt too I believe, on a hot day)

[Jackonicko]

Interesting that the 106 engine upgrade was the only bit of the Jag upgrade so far to be given to BAE as Design Authority, rather than being managed by JUPO and the IPT.......... It also seems to have been the most expensive and the least impressive.

'Smart Procurement'?

[sooms]

Just about correct. Except it was a T4.
All 106 engined Jags grounded tfn- no estimate on how long.
RR apparently scratching their heads, rumours of 106 engine being scrapped.
As re-engined aircraft cannot take the 104 back-could mean bye bye Jag earlier than expected.

[contact_tower]

2 engines on these 'beasties' is hardly enough! 1 is a crisis

I agree, it's great fun to see downwind departures with a Jag at a certain arctic airfield with high terrain around! ;)
*Is it going to clear the hill???????*

[Jackonicko]

"As re-engined aircraft cannot take the 104 back-could mean bye bye Jag earlier than expected."

Why not?

There are plenty of 2,000 hour Jag airframes at Cosford, two of which have already been upgraded to GR3A standards. The conversion from GR1>GR3A costs little more than for a GR1A>GR3A, although the Cosford aircraft do also require a Major.

It would thus be a very easy matter to generate 20-24 virtually new Jaguar GR3As, perhaps allowing the type to remain in service a little longer, and perhaps taking the strain off the Tornado GR4.

[sooms]

Suppose they could convert some more- suspect cash would be a big issue though. Incidently, the BBC article is a slightly optimistic, it's more like half the fleet of current GR3A/T4 grounded if you also count the ones sitting at St Athan undergoing the upgrade. By my reckoning about 27 out of the 53 long term Jag fleet are affected. Take out the other 104 jets on major etc...and it does'nt leave much left for 4 Sqns.
Guess we'll wait for RR to sort it out.

[Jackonicko]

Cash? c. £540 K per jet, plus the Major.

I suspect that the real objection would be that BAE would whine like hell to see a second slough of conversions done by the old DERA/DARO/RAF route and would come up with the same smokescreen about configuration control, mod integrity, etc. because it would be another stark example of what Smart Procurement should still be about, and would be an unwelcome point of comparison for the ongoing Harrier upgrade. Add in the perception among some senior officers that those involved last time committed career suicide (despite the obvious success of the upgrade) and factor in the risk aversion of some of those who now run the IPT, and converting another batch looks unlikely.

But it would still represent a very cheap way of generating an asset which could give another 100,000 FH very cheaply. How many Harrier GR.Mk 9s would £10.8 m (20 more Jags) buy? Two? Three? And without HMP3 (the new rear fuselage) how many hours would they give?

[sooms]

106 engined Jags are now recleared to fly, albeit with operating restrictions. The cause and solution of the disintegrating reheat module is still under investigation by RR!!

[spils]

The QinetiQ/DARA/RAF route is used for avionic upgrades to the aircraft with all engine/airframe mods handled by BAE.

[moggie]

Any further news here? I thought that grounding them forever after a nozzle problem would have been overkill (after all, the F3 continued to fly when it's engines were self destructing due to problems in the hot bits).

[sooms]

106 problem still under investigation, likely to continue for a long while. 106 engined jets are now flying after inspection and are subject to rigorous inspections of the jet pipe area post flight. One aircraft has just failed an inspection after one flight since being recleared to fly- most perplexing.
The crux of the problem is that the current 104 engine is coming to the end of its useful life and apparently needs to be replaced, hence 106 re-engining. If 106 engine is declared a dead duck there are currently no 104's to replace those 104's that reach the end of their lives without spending a lot of money.
Problems like this are an ideal chance for the bean counters to chop a few aircraft- rumours abound within Colt that one Jag Sqn will go in the next defence cuts. With no Operational commitments now that gw2 is over the Jag force has got to be No1 on the list should the RAF have to tighten its belt again.

[Jackonicko]

More powerful 'export' 811s would have been easy to produce for the upgraded Jags (and could be purchased from India), and there is no great shortage of 104s, except that 106s are produced by cannibalising them! The 106 re-engining was not undertaken because the Jags NEEDED a replacement engine, it was spend to save, pure and simple, promising a significant reduction in support costs. When initially proposed, the engine was being promised with a significant increase in thrust dry or reheated, but this was left as an aspiration (in the hope that it would be exceeded) instead of being tightly written into the contract.

[whowhenwhy]

Shouldn't we also be looking at things from an operational perspective? Yes GW2 is over, but I wouldn't say that that means that the Jaguar is a 'rebel' (sorry) without a cause! The Jag remains, despite it's short legs and engine problems, one of our most capable and flexible platforms. Why? One because the GR3 upgrade was managed by us so that it delivered a capable and flexible platform and two because everyone on the Jag has worked so hard to ensure that it remains a viable platform, with viable tactics. We all knew that the 106 was bunk, so lets just do what Jacko has been wanting to do for as long as I've been on these pages and pull all the airframes from Cosford and possibly Shawbury(?) and upgrade them at minimal cost!

[Jackonicko]

Let me re-emphasise that I'm not suggesting that the jag is anything other than a second-best solution. It lacks the night capabilities, legs and payload of the GR7, the all weather capability, legs and payload of the GR4 and is a 20th Century platform. It would be infinitely preferable to replace Coltishall's three squadrons with three squadrons of Harriers, Tornados, Gripens, or Eurofighters, except that rapid-deployability, off main base supportability, support, manpower and operating costs all give convincing reasons why Jag should be retained.

Given the fact that there are insufficient GR4 'frames to see the type through to its planned OSD (which may well slip to the right, since FOAS is still nothing but paper), and given that upgrading further Tornados or Harriers is prohibitively expensive (£7 m per pop for the GR4, a significant amount for GR9 plus HMP3 - one is no good without the other), the option of producing further Jag conversions (at about £540,000 each) to maintain OS FJ numbers seems only sensible. Reduce the GR4 force to the size needed to reach its OSD, and run on 2 or 3 squadrons of Jags and perhaps even 2 squadrons of ALARM/TIALD/Recce F3s.

It wouldn't be glamorous, it wouldn't be exciting, and whoever is CAS during that period will have a capable but rather old fashioned looking air force.

[Feck]

whowhenwhy.

Capable? Flexible? Cheap I'll grant you.

The Jag is only flexible in that it can deploy its lack of capability cheaply.

[Jackonicko]

TIALD w HMSS
EO Vinten w HMSS
IDM
PRISM IDM
P*******
CRV7
30-mm (unlike Harrier)
PII
PIII
BL and RBL755
CBU 87
and within easy sight of adding RAIDS, ASRAAM, etc.

Unless you need to operate hot and high, or carry a big payload, Jag IS flexible

[spils]

Jackonicko - that is just for starters too!! Which other platforms have moving map overlays including e-TAPs, EMERG cards and the nearest DIV airfields?? That databus is a very nice tool indeed!! :-)

[Radar Muppet]

My pilot has voice-activated aural FRCs, TAPs et al! Never mind that cheap visual stuff the Jag has.:ok:

[Jackonicko]

I wasn't going to get into all that highly subjective stuff about the way the Man Machine Interface actually works, and how the software moding is intuitive, 'cos I'm not a Jag pilot, and have logged only a few minutes stick time (and a couple of hours sitting watching) in one since they changed from NAVWASS to FIN.1064, and have never flown in an upgraded jet!

But according to those who ought to know, the way in which TIALD is integrated, and works, and the way in which all the other Gucci add ons work do make it a great little platform to operate.

ETAPS and EFRCs in a 1970s jet? Does the GR4 have that yet? Hat's off to Birchy and his merry gang, I say!

[pr00ne]

Jackonickers,

So flexible that it's involvement in Op TELIC was..........................diddly squat!

I know Turkey was a factor here, but GW1 was the saving grace to a vanishing asset. I fear it being the only major asset not deployed on GW2 may be as terminal for the Jag as the opposite was positive in GW1.

"Unless you need to operate hot or high or carry a big payload" is a pretty damming restriction these days, particulaly in a force that already has an embarassingly high percentage of it's fast jet fleet lacking either Radar (Jag, Har) or flexibility (F3).

Phasing out the Jag early has to be a very attractive proposition. It releases aircrew for a stretched front line (same goes for the ginger beers), saves oodles by closing Colt early and allows funds to go where they are better and more flexibly employed, i.e;Typhoon, GR9 and GR4.

Only down side is the impact on Typhoon numbers if almost half the Squadrons destined to recieve it are axed, but as tranche 3 is looking threatened already, heh, don't we have a plan?

[Training Risky]

Pr00ne:

You took the words right out of my mouth! "Hot and high" indeed...

Coming from the contra-rotating banana force, it amuses me to see almost all the JHC tasking in Afghanistan and GW2, done by 3 sqns in Hants!

As our focus of ops is looking towards places that are almost exclusively hot n' high, (as opposed to the north German plain), it doesn't matter what the Jag COULD carry, if it can't get airborne.

[Megaton]

Jag may not have been involved in GW II but it was the first op/war in a long time in which it's not taken part. Doesn't GW I, Kosovo, Northern Watch, Desert Whatsit count? I think the Jag force have proved their point over and over again, don't you?

[Feck]

Laboured the point, but never proved it.

One PWII on target for 2 jets airborne. Sounds like a waste of fuel to me.

[Jackonicko]

The Jag Force came very close to going on Telic, and would have been very useful (despite the hot/high limitations) had they done so. I'm told that the reason they didn't was largely political - not least because the Jag's participation would have made it more difficult to axe in the post Telic options round......

Re two jets for one PWII, the Jag can self designate while carrying one PW3, or two PWIIs, while if it operates purely as a spiker, other platforms accuracy has historically been enhanced - and it's DHs not the raw number of weapons dropped that count, I thought.........

In any event, in the current climate, shouldn't we be talking about more modern, lighter, smaller, lower collateral damage weapons (and why the RAF hasn't got any?). 500-lb PWIIs would be a start.....

As for the savings by cutting Jag, and the bonus offered by the 'redeployment of manpower' I'd guess that it would just be another nail in the retention coffin to post the Jag chaps onto the GR4, though some might enjoy the GR7/9 (if they can ever afford the new back ends...). But the Jag Force generates considerable flying hours from a small fleet, and at significantly lower overall cost than any other frontline FJ.

[Feck]

No expert me, but I thought it was tanks under the wings to get past the perimeter track, and either TIALD or a PW on the centreline.

500lb or even 250lb (E)PWs on a triple ejector rack are the kind of weapons we need to be procuring. You're right on that one.

:ok:

[pullbuoy]

Jag actually has clearance to operate at the same temperature as GR4 - it is the Plastic Pig which can't get airborne when the going gets hot. Something about the glue melting, apparently.

As for 2 tanks, yeah, if there's no AAR available. They'll happily stay at home when it isn't available, but who won't (tugs forelock respectfully to RAF Hants at this point)

As for spending cash 'better' and more flexibly, I'd love to know how you plan to integrate an air-to-surface datalink with your HMSS for less than £2m on any other platform, FW or RW....

[Jackonicko]

Jag can operate in a self designation fit with TIALD underwing with a centreline tank and a single PW, and there were serious proposals to operate with TIALD/ALQ on the centreline, inboard tanks and outboard small offensive weapons, with overwing BOL and ASRAAM.

[Woff1965]

Years ago I recall reading in 1989-90 that there was a half serious proposal to rewing the Jags with a larger wing giving more lift, increased internal fuel and more stores pylons.

They binned it as they thought (what would later become) Typhoon would be entering IOC in 1998 so there was no need to spend the cash updating something that would be out of service by 2000!

Does anyone have any info on the propsed upgrade? I only saw 1 reference to it in (I think) Air International.

[Megaton]

I was at meeting in '93 in which another Jag upgrade was binned because the jet had less than 5 yrs to run. It was especially irritating that the upgrade would have saved money, improved reliability and significantly increased its defensice aids capaibility. None of the people who made that decision are in in the Air Farce.

[whowhenwhy]

So, to summarise, I think we're agreed that the Jag is flexible and capable. Yes it struggles on legs (that's why we have AAR) and struggles in high temps (that's one of the reasons the arabs build long runways I'd guess-yes as well as all the ops and ADR stuff etc). But not only could we expand (yes EXPAND) the FJ fleet relatively inexpensively by the reactivation of stored Jag airframes, but you could update the Jag even further really easily (as long as you don't give the work to THAT company) and cheaply, by getting the JUPO to do it. He's certainly full of ideas of further improvements. Maybe we can get him the funding to put ASRAAM on, rather than wasting it on some nonsense engine warning function (if I remember rightly) that wasn't required, as happened 3 years ago!

[sooms]

While what everybody says makes complete sense, I fear we are delving into the realms of fantasy with any plans to break open another box of Jaguars. The RAF does'nt have enough money to equip, accomodate and pay its people properly let alone bring back to life aircraft that have spent the last 20yrs in storage at Shawbury and being taken apart twice a week by spotty 18yr old techies.
The fact is that the Jag Wing has barely enough aircraft to equip 3 Sqns and an OCU at present. By removing one Sqn and spreading the aircraft/ personnel between the others would not involve a lost of effectiveness, but would save a fair bit of money.
Guess we'll find out in September....over to the bean counters.

[Jackonicko]

Who is Jupo now?

[spils]

there is no jupo now as far as i am aware, as when he pvr'd, they never filled the role leaving future mods (and ideas) to the ipt.