Panavia Tornado (RAF)

[arfah]

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[The Armchair Soldier]

Royal Air Force Marham saw a historic event last week as four of it’s Tornado GR4 aircraft, alongside a fifth aircraft from RAF Lossiemouth, took part in a routine training sortie with a twist.

Four of the jets carried a special centenary painted tail fin commemorating the 100th anniversary of each individual squadron with the fifth jets tail fin celebrating 40 years of the Tornado.

More images here.

[Tiny Toy]

Four of the jets carried a special centenary painted tail fin commemorating the 100th anniversary of each individual squadron with the fifth jets tail fin celebrating 40 years of the Tornado.

Awful paint jobs, beautiful aircraft

[marktigger]

Four of the jets carried a special centenary painted tail fin commemorating the 100th anniversary of each individual squadron with the fifth jets tail fin celebrating 40 years of the Tornado.

Awful paint jobs, beautiful aircraft

would reverse that beautiful paint jobs ugly aircraft

[SKB]

Would have been nice to see a Tornado in Battle Of Britain era paint

[marktigger]

a mate who was a painter finisher told me the cost both financial and weight of these special paint schemes and its not insignificant. They remain on the aircraft till their next scheduled repaint.

[The Armchair Soldier]

Some great footage in this:

[downsizer]

Could have at least put them all in the same fit. Attention to detail FFS.

Sad to think shortly that you won't see any of those 4 Squadrons flying again.

[arfah]

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[The Armchair Soldier]

Could have at least put them all in the same fit. Attention to detail FFS.

Sad to think shortly that you won't see any of those 4 Squadrons flying again.

Very rare to see one in clean configuration

I was about to say the same. They almost look like F3's without their drop tanks and countermeasures.

[marktigger]

Why is the Tornado still being used operationally?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33772093

because so much money was poured into them there hasn't been enough to develop typhoon properly

[arfah]

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[marktigger]

no An answer is in the link

[Tony Williams]

This is a idle "what if" which has occurred to me.

I was imagining what might have been done over the past few decades to keep a UK foothold in the fast jet market. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I think that buying the BAE P.1216 instead of Typhoon was probably the last opportunity to produce a UK plane and would have had some advantages, being usable on the Harrier carriers and probably attracting USMC orders.

But as a follow-up to that, could anything have been done to improve Tornado, starting in around 2000? The basic goal would be to provide a far greater combat radius, plus make the plane multipurpose, at a minimum cost compared to a new design. This thinking was prompted by the lack of any long-range combat planes in NATO apart from the USAF's big bombers, and the success of the long-range Sukhoi Su-27+ family in the international markets. Australia and Canada, to name the obvious ones, are struggling to choose a plane which really meets their needs, given the vast areas they have to operate over.

I have some fairly drastic surgery in mind for the Tornado:

- widen the main fuselage, pushing the engines apart to create a long bay between them would could be used for internal weapons stowage (lower part) and fuel tankage (upper part).

- add a fuselage plug behind the cockpit; the overall aim being to double to internal fuel tankage.

- this would shift the CG forwards, so add F-18 type LERX to provide more lift forwards; these would also provide a home for onboard sensor and target illuminators.

- add a multi-function radar so that the plane could switch between anti-air, anti-ship and overland strike roles as required.

The first prototypes could be made by chopping and stretching existing airframes. Once debugged, the final change would be to reduce the overall weight (which obviously would have gone up quite a bit) by using carbon-fibre panelling wherever possible.

The intention would be to allow routine missions to be carried out "clean", with internal weapons and on internal fuel. This should reduce drag considerably (I understand that a significant percentage of the fuel in drop-tanks is used up in overcoming the drag of the same drop tanks) permitting a very much greater combat radius. Obviously, external fuel and weapons could be carried when called for.

Fire away....!

[ArmChairCivvy]

Tony, I like the what -if, but to get the plane you are describing (if I managed to catch the idea at all) would have been achieved by giving the F15 the Phantom "treatment". Not fixing what works (e.g the engines) but remodelling the config to suit the mission, and then building the plane in the UK from still applicable parts kits. Does anyone remember anymore that SeaKings were not a British design (plus I don't remember if any significant mods were made, but that is irrelevant).
- the relevant bit is that we abandoned a model of doing things that was already tried and tested;
- gave away the VTOL tech (with a dowry of £2bn, to send "her" on her way). OK, Rolls got their lift engine factory, but also the boot from the (alternative) main engine prgrm
- and relegated ourselves to a components supplier mode (one by one those can be shuffled to where ever; like the IBM type writer that took the market by a storm: parts were made in 9 countries so that no one would object)

[arfah]

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[Little J]

Tony, was your idea to remanufacture the airframes? Lengthening a fuselage is one thing, cutting it down the middle and adding a plug would be a waste of time and money. You'd be better off just building new.

However, I always thought that when the GR.1's got updated to GR.4's, that they should have had the F-3's fuselage plug. Adding EJ200's (with thrust buckets) and other soft and hardware from Typhoon could be good too

[ArmChairCivvy]

It is easy to laugh, but compare the effort to what has gone into the F35, putting all the VTOL/VSTOL stuff into an airframe that is still supposed to remain
- stealthy
- agile (some turning, on top of what the missiles do for you)

when it shares that body form in other uses.

[Ron5]

Tony, was your idea to remanufacture the airframes? Lengthening a fuselage is one thing, cutting it down the middle and adding a plug would be a waste of time and money. You'd be better off just building new.

However, I always thought that when the GR.1's got updated to GR.4's, that they should have had the F-3's fuselage plug. Adding EJ200's (with thrust buckets) and other soft and hardware from Typhoon could be good too

My understanding is that the RAF did indeed want the Gr4 to be based on the F3 airframe. Presumably cost too much.

[Tony Williams]

Tony, was your idea to remanufacture the airframes? Lengthening a fuselage is one thing, cutting it down the middle and adding a plug would be a waste of time and money. You'd be better off just building new.

I was thinking of chopping existing planes around to make the prototypes and confirm the concept, then for production planes to have new carbon-fibre structures wherever possible. However, as many parts as possible would be used from the existing design (not necessarily old parts, but new parts to the old design) to save the time and cost of designing and developing new parts.

[marktigger]

why try and do more with 30 odd year old aircraft Typhoon with the same money spent on it will do the job so lest stop wasting money on tornado and invest in a modern aircraft like typhoon.

[downsizer]

That's exactly what is happening now doofus. There wasn't sufficient typhoons built previously to cover QRA and the FIs previously and invest in A2G.

[marktigger]

That's exactly what is happening now doofus. There wasn't sufficient typhoons built previously to cover QRA and the FIs previously and invest in A2G.

But there are plenty of slots on the production line with Germans/Italians/Spannish scaling back requirements.

[downsizer]

There wasn't at the time.

[Tony Williams]

why try and do more with 30 odd year old aircraft Typhoon with the same money spent on it will do the job so lest stop wasting money on tornado and invest in a modern aircraft like typhoon.

I'm not proposing doing it now. If you read my original post you'll see it says: "could anything have been done to improve Tornado, starting in around 2000?"