the Jag’s handling qualities at low altitude are superb. very stable and very little oscillation due to sudden gusts. its a bomb truck, and yet among the world’s bomb trucks, is one of the more nimble ones. some of the A2G capabilities it offered were superior to the Typhoon as it is now, and it was cheaper to operate and less maintenance intensive, than the Tornado..its uptimes were higher and its operational readiness was possible in much quicker time.

Jaguars had better and more accurate ranging options than the Typhoon, which relies on its radar. the Jag, instead, has a laser ranging marked target seeker (LRMTS) and could use barometric ranging. the height channel is exceptionally accurate- with barometric/inertial /GPS, a terrain reference navigation system (TRNS). Alternatively, by marking the target in the HUD, or by helmet sightline, the pilot could accurately derive the height and position of the target from the digital terrain elevation data.

Also, for locating targets of opportunity, as in Afghanistan, the Jag was a better option. it could instantly generate the coordinates using the HMS sightline, loading the coords onto the nav-attack system with a single stick-top button press. there was no need to overfly the target, hence no warning would be given, and no need to dive, which minimised exposure to MANPADS. The target coords could then be transmitted to other aircraft via a datalink.
the other alternative would be the Litening LDP, but it takes more time and is more long-winded than the above mentioned approach.

Jags cost 13k pound sterling per flying hour, whereas Tornadoes cost 23k pound sterling per flying hour. Maintenance man-hours on the Jag was 12.2 vs 17.0 per flying hour on the Tornado.

well, but the UK has been making some seriously strange decisions, mostly for economy’s sake- first the Sea Harrier being retired, so that the RN has no serious air defence capability, and then the Jag fleet was retired in a hurry, just to show that the Typhoon could earn its keep.

Yes, the entry of the Typhoon and withdrawal of the Jaguar created a capability gap in the RAF that might not be filled completely until the Tranche 3 Eurofighter. The Jaguar was a far better platform for modern conflicts that the current standard Eurofighter.

Of course, the Jaguar had to be retired eventually, and the poor flight performance of the type would have been a tremendous disadvantage in a Cold War era European conflict, the scenario for which the Eurofighter was intended.

Per head, the British government spends less on healthcare than the US government. As a percentage of GDP, the British government was spending slightly less than the US government* until the big increase in spending of Blairs later years.

Americans have (with very, very few exceptions) a mythologized view of health spending, thinking that European countries have largely or entirely state-funded schemes of crippling cost. Not so – on average, European governments spend about the same percentage of GDP as the US govt. But you’re right that there’s a lot more private spending in the USA than here.

*All levels of government combined, for both the USA & European nations.

My guess is that many Europeans have the very false perception that the American private healthcare system is a ruthless free market system that denies care to the poor and burdens the middle class with huge insurance premiums. The reality is far more complex.

Many Europeans would be shocked by the sheer generosity of the Medicare system for the elderly and disabled. In the United Kingdom, an elderly woman might to wait months for a hip joint replacement – or might be denied outright. In the United States, it is likely that joint replacement surgery might be performed on an emergency basis within hours. Public healthcare in the European model rations and denies healthcare whereas the American system encourages immediate, and very expensive, procedures – many of which might not be altogether neccessary, strictly speaking.

The private funded healthcare system is more variable, but generally favors the moderately affluent. An American who have health insurance through his or her employers, or can afford to purchase it privately, has far greater and more immediate access to healthcare than the average European. To put it this way, any middle class American who is insured can expect a level of care comparable to that afforded to a wealthy Britain who pays out of pocket for private healthcare.

From the American perspective, the British NHS denies and rations healthcare, while private British doctors and clinics are cruel and elitist, demanding direct payment before any care is given.

Can you post a link for said articles?

And for the record, I think that LESS money should go on health and education. My logic is that both organisations are so grossly inefficient, with legions of unneeded bureaucrats, that some of the fat could be trimmed away and nobody would much notice. Its no good spending extra money if, like this govt does, you spend it on cr@p. We need proper reform, not money

Perhaps the real problem is that the British Government spends far too much on education and healthcare, but whole of British society spends far too little on eduction and healthcare. Private education and healthcare alternatives are available to the wealthy while they are denied to individuals of even “middle class” affluence. The wealthy can pay cash to go to private physicians and clinics, but the average individual is denied any form of private health insurance and must suffer the delays and limited care of the NHS.

Strictly speaking, it is wrong to suggest that British healthcare and eduction are overfunded, when the very much the opposite is true in terms of a % of GDP.

In contrast, military spending, unlike healthcare and education, doesn’t directly impact the daily lives of the vast majority of the British people in the same way as healthcare or eductation. Military spending is not a subject of individual choice or responsibility, but solely a matter for the government, with the indirect consent of the voters and the funding of the taxpayers. Whether or not defense spending is inadequate is an entirely subjective matter, and although the general public consensus might be in favor more spending, there is also a substantial lack of will to sacrifice pubic services or increase taxation for the sake of defence.

But then, none of those fighters would have been as good as the ADV in it’s intended role, it was really a victim of changing circumstance, a changing circumstance it must be said that was hugely beneficial to the UK and the rest of Europe.

At the heart of the issue is the very misconceived “intended role,” which lead to a fighter that was less capable in many ways than its predecessor. The RAF intentional wrote a specification that would eliminate off the shelf alternatives. In essence, the Tornado ADV combined an altogether unsuitable airframe with an overly ambitious avionics requirement.

Tornado GR.1 was a child of the 1970s – all weather day/night low altitude attack to avoid Warsaw Pact fighters largely lacking look-down radars and shot-down weapons.

1980s: Entered service in 1982 with WE177B nuclear bomb. Added huge capability to NATO until MiG-29/Su-27 were available (mid 1980s).

The big problem is that PANAVIA consortium apparently learned absolutely nothing from the Vietnam War. Low level flight had become increasingly untenable by the era of Linebacker II and the 1973 Yom Kipper War. The Tornado IDS wasn’t any more survivable than the much earlier Buccaneer, and it was only a matter of luck that the MiG-23 didn’t possess the look-down/shoot-down radar capabilities that it might have. Of course, the Tornado ADV was dynamically inferior to Spey Phantom and infinitely inferior to any contemporary American fighters.

The Tornado was absolutely incapable of meeting the MiG-29/Su-27 threat that came at the end of the cold war, and far from contributing, the Tornado fleet might have been considered a weak spot in the NATO arsenal if the Soviet Union hadn’t disintegrated.

Would have been interesting if Dassault had followed through with an M-53 re-engining programme.

When the YF-16 demonstrator convinced all of Dassault’s most likely European customers to buy American, the F-1/M53 was as good as dead.

The real problem with the F-1/M53 is that it needed a major launch customer, and all of large potential customers outside of Europe had already made their substantial purchases. The re-engined M53 was too late on the market, and there was too much (altogether superior!) competion from the United States.

In hindsight, even a late production F-4E represented greater value and capabilities than the F-1/M53, and it is fortunate that Dassault concentrated its efforts on the Mirage 2000.

Yeah, but 5 bucks is 5 bucks, while 50,000 bucks is 50,000 bucks…no matter with what you`re trying to compare to.

Fifty thousand is nothing to worry about when you’re talking about unit costs in the hundreds of millions.

Whereas the big Western air forces are all about long range multi-role air dominance blah, most pocket air arms operate in geographically constricted airspace with limited offensive strike needs.

There is a reason why “big Western air forces” have opted almost solely for “multi-role” fighters: there is no longer a pressing need for a solely defensive, short range, single role fighter.

In my vivid imagination I perceive a role in minor air forces for short range stealthy interceptors, using advanced GCI (as in multiple encrypted datafeeds providing real-time situational awareness without the need to have active sensors such as radar).

The GCI concept has been entirely discredited. In any event, modern radars are hardly cheap – remember the scandal when Tanzania purchased a single £28m radar from the UK! It took an amount equivilent to 1/3 of Tanzania’s annual education budget to purchase a single dual civilian/military air traffic control radar. A single radar! Now imagine how vulnerable a single fixed land based radar would be a modern GCI context.

At one time, the Soviets were more than willing to give away dozens GCI radar sets, along with hundred of small, limited capability fighter planes, not to mention a nearly limitless supply of surface-to-air missiles. The example of North Vietnam is well known, although aviation enthusiast are to quick to forget that North Vietnamese airbases were most often protected from bombing by American political factors, and even at the worst of times, the rate of attrition favored the Americans by a wide factor. GCI controled point defence fighters were far less effective than SAMs or AAA in politically limited environment of Vietnam, and in a modern conflict, limited capability, short range GCI fighters would fare even worse.