The Jaguar, what do you think??

Incase you havent heard about the UK's defence cuts, well one of the proposed cuts is the removal of all of the Jaguar aircraft, abit of a shame really. I think they should stay untill at least 2010, around there original out-of-service date. I have seen the Jaguar in action, i have touched it, heard it, sat in it, watched it and it may be old and is beginning to wear slightly, but the engineers are doing a grand job, and the aircraft has recently proved it self in competitions against the worlds leading fighter/bomber aircraft and it has proved its worth in action and is still combat worthy, i would give it at least another 6 years or if not more in active service, what do you think, and what do you think about these defence cuts???

These cuts are politically driven with no thought to their actual impacton our forces capability, its a disgrace.

They can be seen to be even more ridiculous when you consider that in 2003 the Jaguar fleet completed a lengthy and expensive upgrade to GR3 standard with some of the most advanced equipment installed that exists today. Sheer madness.

I still regret that we never got the version of Jaguar we would have had if the 1980 'Super Jaguar' upgrade programme had gone ahead, with FBW controls, RB 199 engines and a 4x sidewinder (two at the tips and two overhead) redesigned 'combat wing' it was said that it would be as capable as the F-16. Guess who put the block on that one. At least we got the overwing missile rails from it, DOH!

I agree, it is a disgrace what the government is doing to our forces, if tony blair had any sense, he would stop it, geoff hoon has allready had a roasting from MP's in parliment when he annonced it, the MP's went mad and had a right go at him, i do not like geoff hoon at all, nor do i like most of the government, but hey, thats Britain for you, and what we have become, those brave RAF Pilots of WW2 will be turning in their grave at the very thought of these events after what they went through, and for what? a crazed world with crazed ideas and lunitics running the country.. and the MOD

But Hoon is told how much money to save by Bliar (sp. mistake intended).
He then has to just go and do it, he doesn't just decide to get rid of the Jaguar force, for example, on a whim.

The Govt recognized that we needed to change our military structure; ie more mobility, so we get C-17's and proper aircraft carriers, but the annoying thing is that other necessary forces have to get the chop in order to pay for it.

Did you know that the UK now has only FOUR air defence squadrons that are operational? This is the lowest number since the early 1920's when the RAF was virtually disbanded because, it was said at the time, 'there will never be another war'. Don't forget this was when, once the error was realised, fighters were cheap to buy and quick to build, unlike now.

Just to put my pedants hat on for a moment Waynos, blair doesn't tell anyone in Government what to spend, Gordon Brown has that little number well sewn up! He really does have total control of the purse strings.

I know a couple of middle ranking civil servants in the MOD, one of whom works in procurement, who reckon that Blair would really like to plough more cash into the armed forces and recognises that he is asking them to do more with less, but is simply unable or unwilling to confront Brown this side of a general election. Now if that's true it says even less for Blair in my opinion!

Now of course what I have just said is just that, rumour and opinion. But it will be interesting to see what gives after the election, when the smart money is on Brown getting the boot and a Blair friendly Chancellor being installed in the treasury. Assuming of course that the economy still stands up.

Anyway sorry to go off topic. As for the Jaguar, I couldn't agree more with both of you, it's a shame, but just the reality of MOD funding at the moment. Total madness considering the recent upgrade as you have both said though.

Yes, you are quite right, it is Brown. (see Dima, AMM etc, I do back down when I'm wrong)

Interesting what you say about after the election, it would be nice to think that we will see the RAF getting a few Sqns back instead of using those famous number plates on training units.

I am actually shocked with the 4 squadrons defending 244,820 sq km of land, i.e. the British Isles. Tornados arent the best aircraft in the world, most aircraft can take a Tornado down, but again, i have seen a Tornado, and had a full tour of a Tornado by RAF Engineers, went into the inside compartments etc, it is an impressive aircraft, but 4 squadrons, it would be a challenge defending scotland, yet alone the entire UK.

It is nice to know Blair wants more money in the armed forces, but as it stands, shockingly, the UK is the 4th highest military spender in the world

www.cia.gov...
That is a great website, i suggest u check it out not just that page though. It seems that most of our government is only interested in money, and lining their own pockets, at the expense of the nations defence, i would really lover to see the governments faces if britain was attacked and all hell broke loose, then they would shovel money into the military like theres no tomorow...

Personally i'm a little confused in myself about these "cuts".

I'm a strong supporter of the military, but when i try and think rationally about the need for defending the homeland so to speak, i find it difficult to justify a significant increase in the forces we have today. i simply can't see presently, or imagine in the future, a threat to the UK's teritorial integrity that the proposed armed forces couldn't deal with perfectly adequately. In that sense, restructuring the army, and re-roling a few heavy units to more mobile medium brigades seems like a reasonable call to me.

If the mediium term pay off is a far more capable expeditionary force that is actually better equiped to deal with the realistic conflicts we are likely to become involved in then personaly i think it's a reasonably sensible move. Nobody likes seeing what they perceive as cuts being made to the armed forces, but on this occassion I am inclined to give the MOD the benefit of the doubt.

If these cuts are the price we pay to ensure a decent but of Typhoon's, two new carriers actually worthy of the name, T45 Destroyers in reasonable numbers, Astute subs and whatever variant of the Future Surface Combatant actually takes shape, then I think it is a sensible move.

Anyway, sorry yet again for wandering so far off topic. perhaps seeing as we three seem to be having our own private party on this thread, you will forgive me?

I know where you're coming from but the trouble with military planning is that the world is unpredictable. For example had Argentina waited six months to invade the Falklands our operation to retake it would have been virtually impossible to mount, not lreast because Invincible had already been sold to Australia and neither Illustrious or Ark Royal were in service, also the Vulcan was all but retired, the RAF famously rooting through scrap yards for certain items of equipment from aircraft already partly broken up.

The flight refuelling capabilty of the Nimrod and Hercules didn't exist at all before the Falklands war made the conversions a must.

Its easy to scrap useful aircraft and weapons but a long hard and expensive road to get that capability back when something out of the blue make you realise you 've goofed..

I have to agree with badger slightly on that one, yes we would be better equiped, but to use an example, if the F-22 went into combat with say 8 F-15s, yes the F-22 is like either the 2nd or best aircraft in the world, (Personnely i think the Tyhpoon is the best but hey) but no matter how good the F-22 may be, against 8 F-15s, it has no chance, even with a squadron of say 5 F-22s to 10 F-15s, hopefully you can see where I am coming from, the F-22 would be eventually took down, mabye at a loss of about 2 or 3 F-15s but it would go down, and we all know in respective terms the F-15 is relativly cheap and easy to get ahold of. At least the navy is at last getting an aircraft carrier as badger said worthy of the name, hopefuly some better aircraft will be on board instead of the now out-dated sea harrier...

I disagree with your F-15 v F-22 argument, there are a few threads on here that you could check out for informaation on this very subject without me going over old ground again.

The new aircraft carriers are to be equipped with the F-35B STOVL variant in which BAE is a full partner, and an as yet unspecified AEW platform, possibly a variant of the Hawkeye.

When you call the Sea Harrier outdated maybe you are unaware that it can carry out BVR engagements and is equipped with the very radar that the Typhoons is based on and armed with AMRAAM's. Sadly the Govt isn't waiting for the F-35B to appear before canning this crucial capability.

Ballz to the f-22 and f-15, IMHO the Jaguar is an absolutely amazing aircraft...removing them would be a SHAME really..
P.S.: I ve touched,sat in the cockpit of a Jaguar too!

Cool! i would be interested in to how and where u got to do that...

anyway, the sea harrier is a sub-sonic aircraft, no matter what radar or whatever else it has, the fact that it can only hover for like 90 seconds and as soon as the nozzels go down, they lock down, so that aircraft is coming down one way or another, and it has absolutly no chance of out performing or matching other aircraft now being used today, it was an impressive aircraft during the falklands, but that was then, now, the standard naval aircraft we now usually see are the F-18's, Rafales, F-14s, which all stand a chance in combat... again to coment on the Jaguar, it truely is awesom and it would be a mistake to take it out of service...

I disagree so much with what you have said about the Harrier, if you are undertaking a BVR engagement it matters not a jot how fast you are going, as long as you get it right of course and if you should end up in a turning fight it will definitely happen in the Harriers speed range as supersonic flight is for straight lines.

Secondly, yes, it was awesome in the Falklands, against mach 2 Mirages where the A2A kill rate was 28-0 in the Uk's favour, speed isn't everything.

3, why would a Harrier want to hover for more than 90 seconds? This is not relevant to its abilities.

finally, the Harriers nozzles do not 'lock down' unless the pilot wants them to. It is the Harriers viffing (vectoring in forward flight) capability that makes it such an awesome dogfighter and was the inspiration behind modern TVC applications like the Raptor and Flanker.

After all that I do agree that the Harrier needs replacing and the F-35B will represent a goood increase in capability but the Harrier FA2 is not being replaced, it is being removed leaving the Royal Navy with no air defence cover at all, that, to me, is a damn sight more serious than retiring the Jaguar too early. OK we differ in opinion and I'm not having a go you but some BVR air defence capability is better than none at all. Basically, if anything along the lines of the Falkands were to happen between 2006 and 2012 where the UK is forced to act alone we're foooked, you cannot say that about the Jaguar force as much as I love the plane.

The Jaguar is still a good craft, we shouldn't cut them out. But its happening, Idiots runnnig the country. We pay more taxes that all you other countries uet we are downsizing our military and privatising everything. WTF is going on here? Heeelp us! Stop liberating the middle east, come save us fellas! No, seriously.

God, its about time someone slapped Tony, might knock some sense into him.

I shall miss our Jags, they were very able and well-equiped. Why oh why?

On another note, I sat in a MiG-29 at Mildenhall Airshow once, long time ago before Afganistan. Gawd, I couldn't read any of the instruments! And those things look evil in real life.

Originally posted by Teh_Gerbil
God, its about time someone slapped Tony, might knock some sense into him.

It's a little more complicated than that.

There are five great offices of state. the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary, currently Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Blunkett, Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon. All the other ministries are, to a certain extent, optional.

Currently there is a mini-war fighting between the five, the PM and the Chancellor are slugging it out for influence among the other three, and with Gordon holding the purse-strings, he has considerable influence. Bear in mind it's Brown who holds the real power in budgetary situations, as Blair is essentially losing his ability to be an executive leader (like Thatcher) and becoming more of a consensus leader of Cabinet (like Major). This can exclusively be seen to be a result of loss of trust in Blair over the Iraq war.

Of course, ultimately Tony is the boss, as he can fire any of the four, but can you imagine Tony firing Gordon just before an election? Not gonna happen. Jack Straw is the only one of three to have a totally clean slate, as David Blunkett is in trouble atm, and Geoff Hoon was damaged slightly by the Hutton report. Gordon can simply turn to Hoon and say: "cut your budget xxx million, I need it for health...".

Originally posted by VoyagerNX23
Cool! i would be interested in to how and where u got to do that...

My dad was a fighter pilot..flew the hunter and HF24 Marut..fighter bombers..retired prematurely..otherwise he would've been on the conversion lot for the Jaguars..anyhow most of his pupils are Jag/su30MKI instructors now..plus I stay in Pune..Home to the IAF Su30 MKI fleet and a sqdrn of jags too (20th and 6th resp.).. so I got to sit in both Jags and Su-30...Also sat in a MiG-23 and MiG21Bis btw..One thing I'll say..Russian aircraft might be sleek and super cool..but their cockpit interiors suck!!The 1980s Jag I sat in had a better finish than the latest Su-30 MKI!!

P.S.: The Jaguar and the Harrier are both awesome aircraft so I wonder why their being compared? Harrier is still capable of enaging other Naval aircraft...F-18,F-14 etc...IMHO they'd be more than a match for a F-14..

The Jaguar is a nice airplane, no doubt. Very serviceable and flexible. Makes me wonder how they managed to make some other solution appear cheaper than the Jaguar. I suppose the reasoning behind this is that Hawks and Tornadoes could theoretically do the same job, and someone's fiddled the numbers to make such a scenario look appealing.

As far as operational effectiveness, you just have to make do with what's available. Here's hoping the last of the Jaguar crews pull off some truly infamous stunts before they're finally retired.

Originally posted by Daedalus3

Originally posted by VoyagerNX23
Cool! i would be interested in to how and where u got to do that...

My dad was a fighter pilot..flew the hunter and HF24 Marut..fighter bombers..retired prematurely..otherwise he would've been on the conversion lot for the Jaguars..anyhow most of his pupils are Jag/su30MKI instructors now..plus I stay in Pune..Home to the IAF Su30 MKI fleet and a sqdrn of jags too (20th and 6th resp.).. so I got to sit in both Jags and Su-30...Also sat in a MiG-23 and MiG21Bis btw..One thing I'll say..Russian aircraft might be sleek and super cool..but their cockpit interiors suck!!The 1980s Jag I sat in had a better finish than the latest Su-30 MKI!!

Haha, so true! People get in the habit of making cockpits a certain way and totally get in a rut.

Take a look at cockpit photos of the old Focke Wulf 190 and compare them to the Marut... the similarity is very clear. Even the rudder pedals have the same shape. Oh well, at least Kurt Tank had a sense of style.