Tornado F-2/3 fighterperformances ; THE FINAL DISCUSSION

This fighter’s unpopularity is only beaten by the F-18E. But is it’s really that bad?

Well, yes and no.

Outperforming the the aircraft it had to replace (Phantom and Lightning) it suffered some major flawes which necked the value of the aircraft.

Major problem was the AI24 Foxhunter radar wich failed to perform as advertised. Also efforts to improve it were at first not completely succesfull.
Further suffered the radar from the short-sightedness of the designers who originally didn’t include close combatmodes into the radar leading to big critisme.

The fighters advantages are the long range, the armement of 4 Sky Flash and 4 AIM-9L, acceleration, longrangedetection of the Foxhunter. These points make it the good interceptor, which was its primary function.

We can say that Tornado F-3 only became a descent interceptor/fighter around the end of the eighties some dissapointing 10 years after the first flight of the prototype in 1979. By this time it was matched or outclassed by every other important fighter (F-14D, F-15C, Mirage 2000C-RDI, Su-27 Flanker-B, MiG-31,…).

Can somebody give here some info about how Tornado F-3 performed during DACT.
I know that the killratio during DACT against Luftwaffe miG-29s was 2:1 in the advantage of Tornado. Not impressive if you know that 1 Tornado cost as much as 3 miG-29 and the Luftwaffeversion is the most simple of all Fulcrumvariants.

During Red Flag Tornado’s had great difficulties to keep up against USAF F-15Cs.

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