Blackburn (BAE) Buccaneer

[Scooterman]

Upon looking at this one again, I suddenly see an Argentine Buccaneer...

That could have been interesting during the Falklands..........

[GTX]

Upon looking at this one again, I suddenly see an Argentine Buccaneer...

That could have been interesting during the Falklands..........

Indeed!

[Weaver]

I suspect that one limitation of the Buccaneer as a fighter (as opposed to an interceptor) would be the empennage. A T-tail is always a bad idea for high AoA maneuverability (Starfighter, Voodoo) because it gets blanked by the turbulent wake of the front fuselage as the nose comes up and you lose pitch authority at just the moment you need it most. A further problem specific to the Bucanneer might be directional stability due to it's small fin. The Bucc's fin is one of it's least satisfactory features, it's height being set by RN carrier hangar clearance. In the strike role it's tolerable, mainly biting in the landing approach, but in a fighter it could lead to the nose snaking about in a high-G turn.

[DarrenP]

Buccs were fitted with Sea Eagle, Martel AR and Martel TV. could they have carried Harpoon, Alarm and Maverick?

[Hobbes]

You'd have to install new electronics to control those weapons. Maverick is fairly simple (the pilot manually guides the Maverick's TV sensor onto a target), the others need more in the way of communications with the Bucc's navigation and attack systems.

[rickshaw]

You'd have to install new electronics to control those weapons. Maverick is fairly simple (the pilot manually guides the Maverick's TV sensor onto a target), the others need more in the way of communications with the Bucc's navigation and attack systems.

The guidance method may appear simple but its actually quite complex for Maverick - most TV based systems are.  You could, however adapt the TV Martel's system to accept signals from Maverick and transmit commands to it.   Most of its contained in the datalink pod anyway, whereas most US aircraft have their Maverick guidance system internally.  Alarm and Harpoon are in many ways much simpler, being basically fire and forget systems (if fired "blind").  If fired "live" - receiving radar signals/returns then all that would be required would be for the pilot to have an audio link into the radar circuit and be able to hear the strength of the return from the Missile's seeker.

[Weaver]

You might (not saying definitely) find that you need a digital radar and databus to get the best out of Harpoon. Likewise, although ALARM can be fired from just about anything in self-defence mode, to use all it's modes you need a decent, digital RHAWR and again, a databus.

The good news is that the Bucc is big and packed with bulky 1950s/1960s electronics, so replacing them with digital ones and finding more space should be relatively easy, as such exercises go. A Bucc with a 1980s digital combat system and sensors would be a pretty awesome bit of kit (1980s being probably the last timeframe you could see an update being done in, unless production was extended).

[pyro-manic]

How about Tornado systems? Buccs were used to test some of the Tornado avionics, so you could take it a stage further and say that Tornado gets cancelled for some other reason (nasty accident with a prototype?) and the already paid-for tech is squeezed into zero-timed Buccaneer "S.3"s instead?

http://www.blackburn-buccaneer.co.uk/Pages1_files/Radar_Index.html

[rickshaw]

Theoretically possible.  Afterall the RAAF zero houred and digital avionic'ed its F-111s (Cs and Gs) before they were retired.  However, events, operating costs and of course politics intervened to prevent them living out the life extension to its full potential.   IIRC, it also happened with the CF-5s, which underwent a massive upgrade only to be immediately retired and we have the example of the Nimrods as well. There'd be a danger of that happening with the Buccaneers as well, I fear, if upgraded.

[GTX]

Theoretically possible.  Afterall the RAAF zero houred and digital avionic'ed its F-111s (Cs and Gs) before they were retired. 

The RAAF only gave the digital avionics upgrade to the C models, not the Gs.  Neither were 'zero houred'.

[McColm]

In theory you'd only need one Bucc to use it's radar whilst flying in a four-ship formation. The lead Bucc would pop-up and take a sweep. Then pop-down again before continuing the attack. A ASW patrol aircraft could have been used to vector the Buccs to the intended target without the need of their radar.

[rickshaw]

Theoretically possible.  Afterall the RAAF zero houred and digital avionic'ed its F-111s (Cs and Gs) before they were retired. 

The RAAF only gave the digital avionics upgrade to the C models, not the Gs.  Neither were 'zero houred'.

Obviously my understanding of the upgrade was flawed then, Greg.  I've always understood that the airframes were zero-houred and that the Gs received the avionics upgrade as well.

[Weaver]

Theoretically possible.  Afterall the RAAF zero houred and digital avionic'ed its F-111s (Cs and Gs) before they were retired.  However, events, operating costs and of course politics intervened to prevent them living out the life extension to its full potential.   IIRC, it also happened with the CF-5s, which underwent a massive upgrade only to be immediately retired and we have the example of the Nimrods as well. There'd be a danger of that happening with the Buccaneers as well, I fear, if upgraded.

Or the Jaguars for that matter: they spent most of the 1990s giving them all the updates they'd been begging for since the late 1970s, then promptly dumped them in defence cuts....

The Nimrod MRA.4 is not really the same sort of thing, since it wasn't so much a "rebuild" as an entirely new aircraft that just happend to use a 2nd hand fuselage tube and a few other bits...

[DarrenP]

Did read one article proposing putting the Jaguar navigation and weapon system computer into the Buccaneer. I agree that both thease aircraft were sidelined de to lack of funds in the defence budget but don't forget the RAF were desperate to get Tornado and hadn't wanted this hand me down from the navy.
Despite it being the better aircraft!

[alertken]

Enhanced Buccaneers. HSAL pitched various S.2*/**schemes, starting with TSR.2 kit, through the whole saga of AFVG/UKVG, and early MRCA.

The MRCA avionics hack exercise was not pertinent: the bids to the NATO MRCA Management Agency were from MBB for 2 F-104Fs and from (BAC's nominee) Marshall's, who had a long track record of doing design-intensive, production sparse oddballs. (Rusty memory:) avionics kit moves from laboratory breadboard, into production standard by way of A, B, and C models. Memory is that the hack carried B, electronically but not dimensionally representative of the end-product. So NAMMA's 1971 selection of 2 Buccs. was driven by the bomb bay capacity to be cluttered up with bits of kit, wired in any old how: it was the presentation in the cockpit that was real, not the installation in the aircraft. The exercise would have been of minimal benefit to any real enhanced Bucc, which is why HSAL took absolutely no interest in it.

HSAL also wound in its neck on Bucc enhancements after 1971. They had a nice run of new-build RAF Buccs and were, ah, invited by Ministers not to add to the turbulence of US assaults on MRCA. From 1977 HSAL was subsumed into Nationalised BAe.