The performance of Tornado F.3 ADV

The Tornado F.3 ADV, despite being retired in 2011, still remains one of the most underrated and controversial fighters. Projected as a pure interceptor, it faced threats and missions for which it was not designed. Despite early teething problems of the program, which contributed to its poor reputation, at the end of its career Tornado F.3 was a very capable system, able to hold its own in exercises against e.g. teen fighters. Recently, I came across the “Tornado F3: A Navigator’s Eye on Britain’s Last Interceptor” by David Gladhill and an interview he gave to hushkit.net https://hushkit.net/2016/05/01/interceptor-how-how-to-fight-survive-in-phantom-and-tornado/. After the lecture, I started to wonder, how big of an upgrade, in terms of performance and handling, was the ADV version over standard IDS/GR.1? The main differences between them were:
– ADV had a 21 inch plug inserted behind the cockpit, which was necessary to fit Skyflash missiles and to increase the fuel load by 600 kg. It turned out that “the elongated fuselage proved much more aerodynamic and improved the handling, particularly in the transonic region”. Also, it greatly improved the visibility from the cockpit.
– The nose cone was greatly elongated to accommodate the Foxhunter radar.
– The Kruger flaps were deleted, instead the area of glove vanes was increased.
– The RB199 Mk 101/103 (66.01/71.2 kN) were replaced by uprated (and better suited for high-level operations), Mk 104, with 75 kN thrust, although I’ve seen values from 73 to 82.8 kN, what leads to the question, what was the actual figure?
– The automatic sweep control was built in (AWSMD), although it was never cleared for use by RAF. On the other hand, it was used in Saudi’s ADVs with a very good effects.
– The controls were adjusted, to provide more “fighter-like” feeling.
– The empty weight of ADV was increased from 13890 kg (GR.4) to 14500 kg. The loaded weight of ADV was 21546 kg, including 5600 kg of internal fuel. As a result, depending on the thrust figure, the TWR of ADV with 50% of fuel varied from 0.79 to quite respectable 0.90.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find the manual of ADV. Instead, I was able to get some of the E-M diagrams of the early IDS (Mk 101). Despite the low thrust and lack of the ADV’s modifications, the turn rates do not look that bad (data for wing sweep 25 and 45 deg):

For drag index 0, at 5000 feet the sustained turn rate for IDS is 12.3 deg/s at 25 deg, while the instantaneous one is about 17 deg/s (18 deg/s at 45 deg). The only number I was able to find for ADV is a comment from the Gladhill’s book “At low level, this gave Tornado F.3 a respectable 19 degrees per second turn rate, although this fell somewhat short of the 26 degrees per second for an F-16”, but no further details were provided.

Another interesting aspect of the ADV performance is its acceleration. Rick Peacock-Edwards (the first Tornado F.3 squadron commander), stated that at low level the acceleration from 250 to 600 kts took approximately 25 seconds. For comparison, the acceleration from 600 to 1300 km/h at 1000 meters, takes 23.9 s for the legacy Su-27, what suggest that the Tornado F.3 was surprisingly competitive in terms of acceleration.

So my questions are as follows:

– What were the actual figures for thrust of Mk 104? Did they change during the service time?
– Does anyone knows how the AWSMD system worked? Was it programmed like in Tomcat for maximum SPE, or some other criteria was applied?
– How big of an upgrade was the ADV over IDS, in terms of turn performance/acceleration? And also, does anyone have the numbers for F-4 Phantom, the aircraft it replaced, to provide some context? Of course I think everybody is aware that Tornado F.3 was not competitive in terms of turn performance with teen fighters and MiG-29/Su-27, but if anyone has some additional info on this topic e.g. from exercises, it will also be interesting to hear.
– For years the EJ200 was viewed as the replacement of RB199 in Tornado fleet. Is there any pinformation, what type of improvement was expected? And if no, are there any ways to provide an educated guess?