Tornado F3 Aerial Ballet

[Flap62]

Schnowzer,

Would loved to have met you (maybe did!) and worked at your plan. 150 kits would have been just enough to still leave me an option to go vertical, could you?

[LaxeyStu]

Originally Posted by Finningley Boy

Many thanks Leon,

By the way, but have you ever read Lewis Page's assessment of the Tornado F3 in his comprehensive "Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs"?

FB

I have read this book and it's a really engaging read.
I knew that Tornado ADV F3 had severely limited performance, which I think would surprise a lot of the public, especially those of us who naively thought as youngsters that the RAF had a sort of 'Top Gun' style fighter capability.
I do accept that a certain capability was matured for the F3 after several years, but I think Page says that no matter what radar, missiles and data link you have, if you don't have the flight performance to escort an airliner, you must be severely limited in usefulness. The F3 seems to have eventually become a capable way of launching missiles at distance, but presumably they couldn't take the F3 anywhere near other fighter aircraft of the day.

[WB627]

Originally Posted by LaxeyStu

I have read this book and it's a really engaging read.
I knew that Tornado ADV F3 had severely limited performance, which I think would surprise a lot of the public, especially those of us who naively thought as youngsters that the RAF had a sort of 'Top Gun' style fighter capability.
I do accept that a certain capability was matured for the F3 after several years, but I think Page says that no matter what radar, missiles and data link you have, if you don't have the flight performance to escort an airliner, you must be severely limited in usefulness. The F3 seems to have eventually become a capable way of launching missiles at distance, but presumably they couldn't take the F3 anywhere near other fighter aircraft of the day.

Lost that Top Gun capability when we retired the Phantoms

What it is about the RAF that it has to the first air force in the world to retire realy useful aircraft? DC3, Phantom, C130 etc etc etc and not just by a couple of years, only to replace them with aircraft that were not realy up to the job

[LaxeyStu]

Originally Posted by WB627

Lost that Top Gun capability when we retired the Phantoms

What it is about the RAF that it has to the first air force in the world to retire realy useful aircraft? DC3, Phantom, C130 etc etc etc and not just by a couple of years, only to replace them with aircraft that were not realy up to the job

Id be interested to gauge what the views are on this.
I had thought that basically Lewis's comments about the ADV were generally accepted, that either they'd got the requirements wrong (in essentially forgetting about flight at altitude), or more likely that they had to accept the 'fighter version' of IDS come what may, and tailor the requirement to suit.
Certainly by the early 2000s, they couldnt wait to get EF, and ADV was binned as quickly as possible.
However there seem to be many people saying that, 'no, the ADV was really good and met the requirements, and was a perfectly acceptable fighter for the job they needed'
It did have the aspect of having good endurance, which is something EF has less of it seems.

[ORAC]

We never had it with the F-4K/M and only had it for a few years with the F-4J. The Spey wasn’t great above 25K.

[WB627]

Originally Posted by ORAC

We never had it with the F-4K/M and on,y had it for a few years with the F-4J. The Spey wasn’t great above 25K.

So I guess we have to go back to the Lightning for that Top Gun capability, other than once they left the ground they were critically short of fuel

Edit - Only carried 2 missiles and only some marks had guns

[LaxeyStu]

Originally Posted by WB627

Lost that Top Gun capability when we retired the Phantoms

What it is about the RAF that it has to the first air force in the world to retire realy useful aircraft? DC3, Phantom, C130 etc etc etc and not just by a couple of years, only to replace them with aircraft that were not realy up to the job

Off-topic, but in what way is the A400M not up to the job?

[ORAC]

I spent the major portion of my professional life in an era when the plan was 4 ships of F-4 sitting on CAP at 15K watching for and intercepting formations of Jags, Bucks, F-111s attacking at 250ft using their PD. Seemed a real defence compared to a couple of F-6s at 25K with pulse only

For some obscure reason the prevalent theory was that the Russians would, if they attacked, use the same tactics.

An AVM was given a tour of a Backfire at a Russian airbase in the 90s, when we were sort of friendly, and was puzzled when he couldn’t find the TFR and asked why they didn’t have one.

Turned out their attack plan was to come in at 50K+ supersonic and launch their As-4/AS-6s at max range using heavy ECM.

So, if it had come to a shooting match, the F-4 would, with a 20K look-up/shoot-up (and looking down instead of up) would have just as useless as the Lightning. But they were much more capable on QRA, especially the F-4M.

But in Top Gun terms - God had a Lightning as a sports car…

You Tube

[wiggy]

I spent the major portion of my professional life in an era when the plan was 4 ships of F-4 sitting on CAP at 15K watching for and intercepting formations of Jags, Bucks, F-111s attacking at 250ft using their PD. Seemed a real defence compared to a couple of F-6s at 25K with pulse only

For some obscure reason the prevalent theory was that the Russians would, if they attacked, use the same tactics.

An AVM was given a tour of a Backfire at a Russian airbase in the 90s, when we were sort of friendly, and was puzzled when he couldn’t find the TFR and asked why they didn’t have one.

Turned out their attack plan was to come in at 50K+ supersonic and launch their As-4/AS-6s at max range using heavy ECM.

Not sure who the AVM was but that cunning Russian plan (Backfires, high level, high speed, etc) was known about and trained for on at least a couple of F-4M Squadrons well before the 90's...quite how it would have worked out ...........................

[Martin the Martian]

Originally Posted by LaxeyStu

I have read this book and it's a really engaging read.
I knew that Tornado ADV F3 had severely limited performance, which I think would surprise a lot of the public, especially those of us who naively thought as youngsters that the RAF had a sort of 'Top Gun' style fighter capability.
I do accept that a certain capability was matured for the F3 after several years, but I think Page says that no matter what radar, missiles and data link you have, if you don't have the flight performance to escort an airliner, you must be severely limited in usefulness. The F3 seems to have eventually become a capable way of launching missiles at distance, but presumably they couldn't take the F3 anywhere near other fighter aircraft of the day.

Totally unbiased in everything he writes, of course.

[LaxeyStu]

Bias of Lewis Page (ADV remarks)

Originally Posted by Martin the Martian

Totally unbiased in everything he writes, of course.

What is his bias?
The rationale of the book is to say "we should define sensible reasonable military objectives for the armed forces, and provide the best equipment our money will buy"
In the case of Tornado ADV, he says that the priority there was to spend the money with British industry, resulting in a sub-standard fighter.
There are contradictory points such as "actually ADV was eventually quite good and the performance was good enough..." and that it was overall a cost-effective reasonable compromise.