Classic British Flight Sim

Question on the (real world) Tornado - I'm hoping there are some people a bit closer to the RAF or MoD who could answer this, but I seem to recall that when we used the Tornado IDS in the first Gulf War (I guess it would have been GR.1 spec then), that it didn't perform spectacularly well and they brought in Buccanneers that would release the LGBs with the targets painted by the TIALD pod carried by the Tonka. Latterly I believe the Buccs were also carrying TIALD and were self-designating (or one designated the target, another attacked it).

So my question is, do we have more experience with Tornado now, is the GR.4 a better aircraft? People say the Bucc was an outstanding attack aircraft, is the Tornado now (for its time) of similar standard/performance?

In GW1 the Buccaneers were initially just tasked with Lasing targets for the Tornadoes with Pave Spike as there were only two TIALD pods available for the Tornadoes (which it was designed for the Bucc couldn't carry it). Then they started taking bombs along too as they had a spare pylon, this led to at least one case where the Tornadoes had to RTB for fuel while the Buccaneers hung around waiting for targets to appear, hit the targets and then flew home, overtaking the Tornadoes on the way as they didn't have to tank.

The main problem the GR.1 had in GW 1 was that the proposed North Europe Campaign tactic of screaming in at 50' to drop bombs/runway denial weapons directly on the target, turned out to be pretty f****ng stupid in retrospect. More so in a desert where they could see you coming for miles and by merely pointing their guns across the ground and leaving on full auto were pretty much guaranteed to hit someone. The move to medium level bombing brought a few problems as the software wasn't really set up for it at the time, but turned out to generally be a much better idea.

In Libya I don't think they've been using anything as antique as Laser Guided Bombs, more Storm Shadow cruise missiles and Brimstone anti-armour missiles. Admittedly there are questions over whether using a Tornado to carry a Storm Shadow to Libya from Scotland is that cost-effective but if people will retire perfectly serviceable aircraft carriers...

Didn't realise that Laser Guided Wepaons were old hat now? How are Brimstone and the like guided? I am not a big officianado on weapons!

Are they really flying from Scotland (assume Lossiemouth or somewhere?). I had assumed we were based in Italy, Malta or Cyprus at the moment?

Brimstone uses a millimetre wavelength radar, it's specifically designed to hit tanks so it's probably the best guidance choice you can make as it makes it autonomous. Incidentally Brimstone is a British guidance system and warhead on a Hellfire body, hence Apaches are in fact armed with Hellfire and Brimstone...

Storm Shadow is GPS and a radalt for height keeping, I believe it's got a ~400NM range.

Although quite old Maverick has IR and TV guidance modes, although I think only the Harriers could carry those out of the UK inventory.

The preferred method of guiding bombs is GPS these days, generally LASERS have the short coming of needing a good line of sight to the target, depending on the level of moisture in the air this can prove problematic even if there aren't any clouds.

The Tornadoes have, I believe, now relocated to Italy along with the Typhoons, they were initially operating from the UK as I believe they had to move stores to Italy for them, i.e. Brimstone and possibly Paveway IV as otherwise they'd be pretty useless and the Italians don't use some things we do e.g. Brimstone. And it can take a while to move theses things around. Obviously this is less of an issue for Typhoon as they're unlikely to actually use weapons on any given sortie, although it's got to be pretty embarrassing if the French shoot someone down and they don't...
Malta is out as it's technically neutral and Cyprus is a surprisingly long way from Libya, even more so the Western part where we now appear to be providing Close Air Support for the rebels.