Re: another plane crash ...

Steve Terry wrote:
> "Steve Terry" <gFOURwwk@tesco.net> wrote in message
> news:h2m1q3$scm$1@news.albasani.net...
>> "Dave" <davenpat@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
>> news:nJOdnZ42IcWP6NPXnZ2dnUVZ8h2dnZ2d@bt.com...
>>> Brian Morrison wrote:
>>>> nntp@benison.co.uk wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:38:23 +0100, Brian Morrison
>>>>> <scrapspam@fenrir.org.uk>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> You can't hit a radar you can't see, and terrain masking
>>>>>> works both ways.
>>>>> The idea is to fix the target at altitude and then come in fast and
>>>>> low.
>>>>> Then climb,  firing your anti radar missile and dive back down for
>>>>> cover
>>>>> and
>>>>> fly out at low level.
>>>> I thought the advantage of ALARM was that you can fire it and then
>>>> leaving it hanging on its parachute until something excites it enough
to
>>>> detach and rocket down on its target.
>>>>
>>> To the best of my knowledge ALARM was never fitted to an F3
>>> Dave
>>>
>> I don't think there would be room for them and their system,
>> unless you removed their nice new AIM-120 AMRAAM's
>> Steve Terry
>>
> Found this:
> http://www.raf.mod.uk/equipment/tornadof3.cfm

At least that site is fairly accurate. The last one I looked at said
that tornado had 2 guns on board. The GR4's had the right hand gun
removed and that was replaced with a FLIR camera at MLU. The F3' were
never built with 2 guns from day one.


> "In the months before the 2003 Gulf War, a small number of Tornado F3s
> underwent a modification programme to allow them to operate in the
> Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) role.
> The modifications permitted the carriage of a pair of ALARM missiles
> in place of the Skyflash or AMRAAM missiles, but the modified aircraft
> were not in the event deployed during the conflict"

Ah! That would explain the flurry of activity from BAe's site at that
time. I  could hear the engine ground runs from where I live and I knew
something was going on. The runs must have been EMC runs so that the RAF
could modify other aircraft after clearance by BAe.

BAe owns the design rights for development and if the RAF want to fit a
system, they have to get the modification fully approved and certified,
by BAe, before they can do the job themselves.

This happened before the Falklands war. The RAF had found out that the
F3 had no Chaff and Flair defence, fitted as standar kit on the Saudi
A/C. An aircraft was flown in on Friday morning and was flown out on
Monday morning with the modification, done, written up and fully
approved. A group of us worked that aircraft day and night over the
weekend. The RAF modified their aircraft and flew them out there, when
they were ready.

Another problem was with the Jaguar. The Jaguar International had over
wing pylons for missiles, but the RAF ones didn't. They had to be
manufactured to be fitted and flown down there. In the end, I don't
think the aircraft made it out there.

> So there are some F3's with ALARM, and with the Typhoon F2 increasingly
> taking it's place, you would expect more F3's to be re-equipped with ALARM

Without going into any detail, the origins of the Typhoon were taken out
of the hands of an historical development team.

Knowing the F3 as I do, I would expect not. The GR4 is capable of flying
with up to 12 ALARM missiles. The development A/C did. The problem with
the F3 is that it doesn't have the wiring or stub pylons to carry more
than 4. Admittedly, it could fly with the 4 in the skyflash tunnels.

Dave
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