Depends how you define best. American pilots who flew it were blown away by the data-link functionality. Apparently it was far in advance of what they were used to (likewise British pilots often list the data-link as one of the things they missed most while on rotation to the states).
Americans really didn’t focused on IRST. Radar is better.
Foxhunter stage 2
Introduced decade.5 after apg 63 and a decade after psp ap63. No nctr( on msip) till 96’. Took more than a decade to get into(if they got with it) range figures americans were in since 1975(with f14 and f15).
And then there’s the apg 70 of the E that went IOC 2 years before gulf war. And F14D’s APG 71 which was a vast improvement over the awg9, came ioc in 91’, which is another beast
I don’t see how that time scale is relevant when the UK was operating Phantoms with radar from the mid-1960s up until Tornado.
Obviously a country isn’t going to develop a new fighter radar unless they’re also building new fighter aircraft to install it in.
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Source: I made it up.
Time scales are very important. If you compare a plane you compare it to contemporary fighters. I’m talking RL(which if you read the context of thread its about british radars IRL, this timescales), not ingame.
Developing technology doesn’t stop just because an objective is fulfilled. And ADV’s development started in 1976 and radar was already in testing since late 70s.
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Why would they not ask for upgraded radars if it’s obsolete? Look at Israel. The Kurnass had upgrades. Other countries did upgrades to the Phantoms. It’s what they’re doing for the Eurofighter right now. Upgrading the radar / systems that have become obsolete.
Arguably, had they just kept producing Phantoms instead of wasting time designing the Tornado they’d have been better off.
South African Air Force Gripen C: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/SAAF-Gripen.jpg
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If you asked someone at the time I imagine the answer would be “why spend money upgrading the Phantom when it was already due to be replaced by the Tornado in a few years anyway”?
Arguably, had they just kept producing Phantoms instead of wasting time designing the Tornado they’d have been better off.
Well the Tornado IDS was happening anyway because the RAF needed it (and it was a superior interdictor aircraft than the Phantom - not the the Phantom was used for that by then). And the RAF was going to need a new interceptor at with improved capabilities compared to the Phantom.
The option you’re suggesting would be to perform a massive upgrade on the Phantom fleet, while also purchasing more F-4s from the American boneyard and paying to upgrade those as well. This would be a very expensive option as you would be trying to carry out a massive upgrade on three different standards of aircraft (FG.1, FGR.2, F-4J) which is inevitably more expensive than upgrading one type of aircraft. And at the end of the programme would still be left with what is ultimately an old airframe.
The other option would be to buy a whole new fleet of aircraft. That way the whole fleet is standardised, reducing future maintenance and upgrade cost; you also get brand new airframes with all the advantages that brings; and you get aircraft designed around modern avionics / systems rather than having to shoehorn them in to an old aircraft. This sounds like the better option and it’s what the UK went for in real life.
When the UK carried out their analysis for a Phantom replacement they concluded the only aircraft which met our requirements were the Tornado ADV, the F-14 and the F-15; arguably that would be a more interesting what-if debate to have. The Tornado ADV obviously won that competition; the F-15 was eliminated because it was a single seat aircraft, and the F-14 was barely considered because the Americans wanted far too much money for it. The Tornado ADV also let Britain design an aircraft as it wanted, and offered commonality with the Tornado IDS fleet we had on order (which is obviously good).
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My simple suggestion was to just produce more Phantoms, the technological know how was studied and complete already. Fresh production airframes of an already produced design with the necessary changes would be cheaper and more effective. Instead, they designed and built something that didn’t improve on what they already had in a meaningful way for all I care.
F111 for the Australians :)
Yeah that would be cool, one of the few commonwealth jets id quite enjoy having, but not really much help for Britain TT at the moment as its basically just a bigger Gr1
The Tornado IDS was a far more capable strike aircraft than the Phantom so that was going to be purchased anyway
For the air defence role I still don’t think replacing the Phantom fleet with new build Phantoms makes much sense. By the time you’ve purchased a whole new fleet of Phantoms and paid for the development programme to refit them with modern avionics and a new radar it will not be cheap.
At that point you may as well pay for the Tornado ADV and have an all-round more capable aircraft. And yes the Tornado ADV was a better airframe than the Phantom, off the top of my head:
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It was way more fuel efficient (for 420 kts cruise at sea level the Tornado uses 5,800 lb / hour of fuel, while the Phantom uses about 9,000 lb / hour - and that’s with the British engines (which were much more fuel efficient than the American ones). With both aircraft having a roughly equal maximum fuel capacity you can see the Tornado would have much superior range.
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The Tornado has triple redundant fly by wire controls, and backup mechanical control linkages, and a bunch of other survivability features. By comparison the Phantom didn’t even have a fire extinguisher.
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The Tornado was designed to be much more maintainable in the field. As an example an engine could be swapped at the side of a taxiway in under 40 minutes, and the stated maintenance hours per flying hour was about half that of the Phantom.
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The Tornado ADV had a high level of commonality with the Tornado IDS (which as mentioned the UK would be buying regardless). That has obvious benefits when it comes to cost and maintenance.
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Flight performance was generally somewhat superior or equal to the Phantom.
And all those points assume that the Tornado ADV’s advanced avionics avionics and radar could be squeezed into a Phantom, something I’m somewhat skeptical about. Otherwise the list of advantages would be longer.
just a shame the development of the ADV needed so long that germany switched to the F4F ice as an emergency solution
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of Germany ever having any real interest in the Tornado ADV. If timing was their concern though I’d argue they made the wrong choice because the Tornado F.3 ended up entering service before the F-4F ICE.
The Phantom if using the same ordnance / equipment would have done the same job (and likely better).
Why not, this was done cheap in other countries who lacked the technological know-how to begin with.
But it wasn’t, and as far as I’m concerned didn’t really deserve any of the hype it has today. It was a domestic product, almost as bad as that time China touted the J-8F as an F-22 killer.
They could easily have re-engined the Phantom for the amount of money that it cost them to develop the engines for the Tornado.
It would not be the first time they retrofit fly-by-wire into an airframe and made improvements to capitalize on it. Even so, for a strike aircraft it could easily have gone without it.
If they built it in Britain and increased the MTBF of parts, the maintenance time / cost would also significantly go down.
If they had gone with neither Tornado version, they’d likely have been better off. There were better candidates, and they could likely have worked out a method of domestic production that would keep them in the loop on technical know-how and experience in the industry (which was the ENTIRE point of domestic production of an aircraft in the first place for them).
At a time when all other major players were creating aircraft lightyears ahead of any gen3.
I really don’t think it would be difficult in the slightest.
- better solution.
ah yes because it had the ground radar and the systems to keep flying 35m above ground
debatable, restructuring the f4 for all specific ordanances ground radar etc is a loot of work and might not have fitted into the aircraft at the end
Single question: Why is anyone keep typing in the Typhoon thread who hates Typhoon?
Go to your favorite thread and talk about your favorite.
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dont ask me, we practicaly had to banish him from the german typhoon thread because he went completly off topic to discuss the stealthiness of russian aircraft
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What stealthiness? XD
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