The US didn’t attempt to hit the Airfields they were prioritised and assigned to the RAF.
2 squadrons of Tornados.
One squadron was based in Bahrain and the other Saudi.
They would fly meet a tanker take fuel accelerate to mach and cross the border, the Tornados TFR system allowed it to fly on the deck in any conditions.
the attack groups were comprised of 8 airframes only 4 would carry the JP-233 the rest carried 8 1000lb and 2 AIM-9L missiles, the bombs were set to airburst and were loft bombed set to detonate before the Tornados with JP-233 made their runs.
Tornado squadrons were tasked with these runways and had some success, US aircraft then in the daytime would when Iraqi SAM and aviation threat was reduced bomb them with B-52s
It was risky to fly over the desert at night and in those conditions there is an account where a squadron leader cancelled an attack with AAA fire over the target as it was too hot. The other issue with the JP-233 is the aircraft had to fly straight and level over the runway making it incredibly vulnerable and the JP-233 when activated would light up the aircraft.
While the JP-233 was great weapon it was found that precision bombing taxi ways and had the same impact to an airbase as the JP-233 runs. Tornado crews switched to LGBU and with the SAM threat reduced they operated at higher altitudes with Buccaneers budy lasing the targets.
Huh, I literally always heard the claim that F-18s/‘the Americans’ had tried first, so really it doesn’t lend itself to a direct comparison between respective strike aircraft at all.
I appreciate the much more informed take than my own.
i mean a2a tornado vs F-15A, F-15 superior in like every way.
for ground pounding itd be going up against like F-18 as its rough contemporary, and tornado was still in the first half of its service when the production 229 strike eagles were made.
The F-14s avionics were pretty old by this point, the Tornado would have had it beat at range so long as they knew how to avoid the Phoenix (if they even bothered using it)
The Tornado made up for the abysmal flight envelope by having incredibly good avionics, things like the radar and ECM were virtually unrivalled, particularly by older aircraft like the F-14 (if the radar worked).
AN/AWG-9 was an incredibly powerful radar, but its development traces back to the 60s. By the time the Tornado was in service the AN/AWG-9 could be jammed/negated, and not to mention the Foxhunter radar was extremely impressive as well.
The tornado evolved into essentially an incredibly effective hybrid between an ECM and Ground strike aircraft with all of them sharing the incredible ECM, i believe some of the pods in-game come with ECM IRL.
I am not going to tell you I have a source this is my opinion, but consider I hate the tornado, but in my opinion no, the Tornado probably had the best ECM of its era.
They did they bombed them from high altitude but not in the first weeks of the conflict Iraqi SAM network was still capable, B-52s also bombed the airfields and F-111 (if I recall)