Oh good, another couple of hundred pages of petty, childish, schoolyard point scoring and bickering by the usual suspects, to look forward to, interspersed with the (extremely) occasional piece of genuinely useful information…

-Dazza

I wish people would stop referring to the ‘scrapping’ of the Tranche 1 Typhoons… IF the original (idiotic) plan to withdraw them does go ahead, I seriously doubt we’ll see something akin to the carnage wrought upon the RAF’s Phantom fleet, aircraft being unceremoniously torn apart by scrap merchants. It’s more likely that a number of airframes will be cannibalised for spares while a sizeable number will enter long term storage, If the Government have any sense that is! Of course the ideal solution would be to use some of them to form up another squadron or two, once suitably updated to allow them a bigger swing-role capability. One sticking point may be the fitting of an AESA radar though, as I understand the front bulkhead is not structurally suitable on Tranche 1 jets, although I also believe a ‘reasonably low cost fix’ already exists to address this problem? The key factor of course though, will be if the Government have the political will to do what’s actually good for the RAF, rather than what looks good on the balance sheet…

-Dazza

Yes, Typhoon has been more expensive than it should’ve been, mainly due to partner nation procrastination, and by one nation more than the others. But since only four European nations use Typhoon in significant numbers, out of what? 40+ of the total number of European countries (I know quite a few don’t have significant armed forces, but you get my point), I hardly see how you can think that it has ‘effectively gutted European force structures’…

-Dazza

When is the last Typhoon scheduled to be delivered?

I think without additional orders, production is due to end in 2018, so final delivery the same year I guess…

-Dazza

Out of interest, why did the RAF isolate the AWS?

It was apparently disabled on advice received from Boscombe Down, and not having all wing sweep positions cleared for service use. Interestingly, the RSAF Tornado fleet retains the AWS function…

Here is a quote lifted directly from another forum, explaining the subject further.

Unfortunately one effect of not clearing fully all the available wing sweep positions led indirectly to the lack of auto wing sweep in the RAF. The problem was that the automatic schedule shaved off some corners of the performance envelope in order to ensure that wings reached the required sweep within the mach/airspeed limitations – and, when sweeping commenced, no other angle could be selected until the required setting was achieved. Although manual wing sweeping should also be performed in the same way, in practise pilots frequently do not anticipate and also change their selection in mid sweep contrary to the R to S.

It was thought that a competent pilot could do better than the automatic schedule but in practise this is simply not the case because the pilot has other more important priorities and frequently operates the jet at less than the optimum sweep angles and in excess of normal operating limits.

To those proponents just a few set sweep angles I would add that an aircraft like the Tornado can perform well as a bomber with just a few settings but it needs all the manoeuvring help it can get in the fighter role – even with AMRAAM and ASRAAM. With fully variable auto wing sweep and manoevres it would be a lot better off – and this could have been a no-cost option for the RAF. In Saudi service the auto wing sweep and manoeuvres on the fighter have proved their worth – fully variable would be even better.

-Dazza

The radar was the major issue, the engines also were upgraded in the change to the F.3, more powerful -104s were fitted. The airframe was a known quantity in that the RAF already had the same basic airframe in the GR.1, I’m not aware of any major issues with either the GR.1 or F.2/3 airframe…

-Dazza