Aircraft that Britain Shouldn't have had

[XV107]

Kit - forgive me; I should've added the critical point that Thorvic added about BAE's aspirations at the time, giving them a window of opportunity for touting the Nimrod as a P-3 replacement...

Darren - sorry to come back against this, but.

1. The Jag upgrade was for Bosnia and the need to provide a designation capability for the RAF aircraft in theatre; the Tornado fleet was taking its turn on the Iraqi No Fly Zones, which meant that the RAF's force for Bosnia didn't have pods; the ROE in place meant that there was a real danger of British aircraft playing a minimal role in events, hence the Jags getting TIALD. TIALD was not the easiest thing to handle in a single-seat aircraft, and this led to some of the other upgrades, including the splendidly named TITS (TIALD Instrumented Training System), designed by a gaming company.

2. Buccaneer could self-designate; indeed, it was able to do so before the Tornado was in service. The reason Tornado couldn't self-designate in 1991 was down to funding; there were plans (how far they got, I forget) to put Pave Spike - as seen on the Bucc - onto the TGR1, but these never came to fruition. As I recall, it was thought that adding a relatively limited pod to the Tornado wasn't cost effective, given that a pod (TIALD) was to be developed for it. Remember that Pave Spike was day-only. The concept of operations for the RAF and presence of other types meant that it was thought that it would be safe to leave designation in the hands of the Bucc force (remember that we didn't have that many pods, either), with Buccs, Jags and Tornados delivering Paveways as appropriate - with the Tornados probably being less likely to do this given their envisaged role if the 3rd Shock Army came calling. Yes, the Buccaneer had an ARM capability and a TV guided missile capability, but the latter was for anti-shipping rather than land attack (I've no doubt that the Bucc could've done land attack with Martel had it been called upon), while the ARM was overwhelmingly for shutting down radar on Soviet surface warfare units. The Buccs were not tasked to deliver dedicated SEAD against Soviet assets at land since the overland attack units had other tasks, which matters because...

3. ...To operate at medium altitude, you require dedicated SEAD. Lots of it. The USAF, thanks to its Vietnam experience, had it (I'm talking about at the time of service entry for the Tornado) in the form of the F-4G plus the ANG units with the last of the F-105Gs (which went within 12 months of 9 Squadron forming). They had a number of aircraft capable of carrying Shrike as well. But the RAF did not have anything like that capability; indeed, I could've deleted the 'like that capability' from the first part of the sentence...

There is a popular assumption that the USAF abandoned low-level for medium-altitude while the RAF bumbled on, but this is a gross caricature. It is more accurate to say that the USAF had the option of operating at medium altitude and would do so when circumstances permitted. A further point here is that if medium altitude was the preferred MO for the USAF, why on earth were F-16s scattering dumb bombs around Iraq in 1991? It wasn't because their crews were hopeless (they most assuredly weren't), it was because they lacked the means of precisely delivering weapons from that altitude band. Likewise, if you'd gone to Upper Heyford or Lakenheath and told F-111 crews that their airframes were a testament to an out-of-date way of thinking about attack profiles, they'd have looked at you slightly askance.

Low level in Europe was not at all silly - going in at about 400+ knots (sometimes more) at low level against the target sets presented by the Soviets was credible. You've got aircraft which are difficult to acquire because of their speed and jamming of your radars, plus visual acquisition is hard - daylight because of speed and poor weather, night because...well, it's night. You also have the fact that it takes an awful lot of metal to be put into the air to actually get a hit on an aircraft travelling at some speed. Now, the predicted loss rates at low level on the Central Front were... sobering, but far less worrying that medium level. Iraq in 1991 was not, despite what we often read, a mirror image of the Central Front. The Tornados went in against large expanses of real estate - some airfields were/are bigger than Heathrow - with a huge array of AAA systems better suited for low level; the problem, of course, was that to deliver JP233, the low-level attack profile was the only one available, while as noted earlier, because of the validity of low-level in Europe, the weapons system on the Tornado was optimised for that, hence the iron bombs being delivered from that altitude as well. This meant that they went into the teeth of the Iraqi defences and there was sufficient metal flying about for losses to be taken.

4. You criticise the Tornado vs the Buccaneer in a slightly Top Trumps manner, notably the similar warload carried over greater range. Let's just look at that for a moment. Tornado would carry 8 iron bombs (or BL755) plus two tanks, two AIM-9 and two defensive aid pods (Sky Shadow & BOZ). It also had 2 x 27mm.

The Bucc, because tandem beams were not introduced - not as the result of the Tornado being procured, let's be clear - could manage 4 bombs internally and four under the wings. That means no defensive aids, no AIM-9 and no tanks (although the latter were, of course, less of an essential item).

5. Yes, the Bucc had the ARM, guided missile and Pave Spike/Paveway capabilities when Tornado entered service, but this is basing criticism upon comparing a mature airframe which had been in service for over a two decades (one in RAF colours) with a brand new one. The RAF Buccaneer got Martel in 1974, Pave Spike in 1979. Tornado got its ARM in 1990 - yes, in trials fit - and TIALD in 1991 - again in trials fit form - which even allowing for the full service entry for both systems was in truth a couple of years later, compares well enough with the Bucc. That, though, can't be the sole measure, because you also have to factor other things.

First, weapons are often integrated on a timescale which is dependent upon when other airframes with that capability go out of service. As but one example, the Tornado only got the Sea Eagle because the retirement of the Bucc necessitated it.

Second, do you integrate an extant weapon or piece of kit if it is a 'nice-to-have' extra not essential for the key role of the aircraft? Finances usually dictate that you do no not.

Third, if the extant piece of kit does not deliver the capability you want - because, say, it is a day-only laser designator, or because it is barely up to the job, do you put the money towards integrating it for a short time, or towards the better bit of kit, or somewhere else where the need is more urgent? If you look at Tornado, we don't integrate the Martel because its not being there doesn't degrade the Tornado's capabilities (and in the air defence environment we've discussed, it isn't necessarily going to deliver anyway by the mid-80s); we decide to go for a more effective ARM than AS37 Martel or AGM-45 (choosing ALARM over HARM in about 1983) because neither of the older systems really deliver the effect we want.

My apologies for the length of this post, but the objections you raise to Tornado don't take account of an awful lot of the factors relevant to the reasons it was procured, the choices made about weapons systems/avionics or the way in which it was intended to be used or was used.

[XV107]

As a follow-up, the question of alternatives has rightly been asked.

What was there?

F-15 was too expensive, and involved funding someone else's aircraft industry when you wanted the tax returns, etc, to come into the British exchequer, and we'd have been launch customer for the Strike Eagle.

F-14 - we'd have been launch customer for a variant of an already expensive aeroplane not cleared for the weapons we wanted and almost certainly unsuited to the low-level attack role in the way we envisaged it.


Buying more Buccaneers wasn't seen as a viable option at the time MRCA was embarked upon - with hindsight, we can say that this was a questionable view, but at the time the idea that you'd be facing the Warsaw Pact in the late 80s/early 90s with an aircraft designed in the 1950s would have got you laughed at. We now know that it wasn't such a daft idea, but it didn't seem like that at the time.

Jaguar didn't meet the requirements

F-111 - what the RAF wanted, but had been cancelled. Had it been purchased, no MRCA, thus no Tornado. But it had been cancelled, a new aircraft was needed for the RAF, AFVG failed and MRCA  was the answer. By the time we might have decided that F-111 was the answer after all, it would have been a political disaster to have gone for it, and we'd have done so in the mid-70s - when money was extremely tight and chopping MRCA would've almost certainly meant no new aircraft at all.

F-16 - non-starter, doesn't do the job required

F-18 (as it was at the time) - non-starter, doesn't meet the spec.

Mirage F1 - doesn't meet the spec

Mirage 4000 - too expensive and after AFVG a non-starter, even if it met the spec, which it probably wouldn't have done.

On closer examination, none of the alternatives available in the 1968-77 timeframe (I choose the latter date as it might have been possible to get an alternative into RAF service by 1982 had the cancellation of Tornado occurred no later than 1977) actually did the job apart from the one we'd set out to buy in 1965, but then cancelled because we couldn't afford it. And let's not forget that the last F-111 to come off the production line did so in 1976, so we'd have needed to have got our order in before that, otherwise its 'and the cost of restarting production is...' time.

[DarrenP]

so the only horse in town scenario left us with a mediocre platform.
Hence one of the Major reasons we should never have bought tornado.

and at least the end is in sight they just need to stop tinkering with it shut the funding off for any more "Updates" and invest the money in Typhoon as I suspect we'll be needing them fully ground attack capable very shortly.

[DarrenP]

XV107

Totally agree with your analysis on PGM and ARM/SEAD personally I think that the RAF hierarchy buried their heads in the sand over these capabilities throughout the 60's, 70's and 80's. And I don't think its fully was down to cost I think there was a huge element of lack of vision. systems like shrike and maverick could and should have been in service with RAFG on the F4M and the Jaguar fleets.
That lack of vision it would appears to continue with the discarding of ALARM a system that should have been integrated into more platforms.

Buccaneer deployed with paveway in 82/83 to Cyprus to support the army in Lebanon.

[DarrenP]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11186470/MoD-to-speed-up-Typhoon-upgrade-for-Iraq-campaign.html

[Captain Canada]

Hard to believe the Brimstone isn't available.

[DarrenP]

Hard to believe the Brimstone isn't available.

yeap it is but there hasn't been the funds to invest.

[The Wooksta!]

Hard to believe the Brimstone isn't available.

yeap it is but there hasn't been the funds to invest.

What would you rather have?  Expensive whooshy things to kill foreign civilians or a functioning UK health service that keeps Aunty Gladys alive?

[scooter]

Hard to believe the Brimstone isn't available.

yeap it is but there hasn't been the funds to invest.

What would you rather have?  Expensive whooshy things to kill foreign civilians or a functioning UK health service that keeps Aunty Gladys alive?

As a combat vet, give me functioning health care over expensive whooshy things any day of the week.

[pyro-manic]

What would you rather have?  Expensive whooshy things to kill foreign civilians or a functioning UK health service that keeps Aunty Gladys alive?

On recent form, it seems politicians want Britain to have neither...

[XV107]

so the only horse in town scenario left us with a mediocre platform.
Hence one of the Major reasons we should never have bought tornado.

and at least the end is in sight they just need to stop tinkering with it shut the funding off for any more "Updates" and invest the money in Typhoon as I suspect we'll be needing them fully ground attack capable very shortly.

Forgive me, but I still can't understand your specific reasons for saying that Tornado is 'a mediocre platform'. It might not have been a TSR2/F-111/F-15E, but look at what else there was out there in the early 1970s at time of project definition and what there was available in 1982 when it entered front line service; heck, look at what was available in 1991 for Op Granby...

Yes, yes, Buccaneer, but it wasn't seen as a credible choice at the critical moment, and while offering advantages over the Tornado GR1 that aren't just down to it being a mature platform in some respects, it wasn't in others (for instance, if charging about at 100ft at 0200 on a rubbishy night with 3rd Shock Army in front of me, I'd take the Tornado, much as I respect and admire the Bucc...) .

Nothing that the Tornado GR has done, at least as far as I can see, makes it an aircraft we shouldn't have had. There wasn't a credible alternative to it at the time it was ordered, and there wasn't a credible alternative until the F-15E, which was coming into widespread US use as the Tornado headed towards ten years in service. In all honesty, I simply can't see how the RAF could've made the contribution it has to a whole host of operations since 1990 (and to NATO during the Cold War) with the alternatives that would have had to be employed had the Tornado been cancelled. We needed the Buccs, Jags, Harriers and Tornados to do what was required at the start of that period, and arguably still need the Jags, Harriers and Tornados (but don't have them) to do what our government (term used generically rather than a specific administration) wishes to be done. But we don't have all three, and if two of the three had to go, we kept the right one because of what it does. It isn't perfect, but to consign it to the mediocre category seems far, far too harsh.

Tornado an aircraft we shouldn't have had? Sorry, can't see it myself.

[DarrenP]

Hard to believe the Brimstone isn't available.

yeap it is but there hasn't been the funds to invest.

What would you rather have?  Expensive whooshy things to kill foreign civilians or a functioning UK health service that keeps Aunty Gladys alive?

nah the funding should have been diverted away from tornado as soon as typhoon entered service

[DarrenP]

early 70's F111 & F4 still in production

[Thorvic]

Hard to believe the Brimstone isn't available.

yeap it is but there hasn't been the funds to invest.

Ah but that's the problem Typhoon just isn't up to speed to take up Tornado's duties, Tornado replacement funding was bundled into the Carrier Strike program, so that will be the end of the decade before Typhoon can use Brimstone and Stormshadow, and it will be the middle of the next decade before the F-35B can with its block IV or V software.

What would you rather have?  Expensive whooshy things to kill foreign civilians or a functioning UK health service that keeps Aunty Gladys alive?

nah the funding should have been diverted away from tornado as soon as typhoon entered service

[NARSES2]

Please remember the NO POLITICS rule