Something for Jaguar fans

The SEPECAT Jaguar has just been formally retired from service by the French Air Force and its final days with the RAF are also not too far away. In many eyes this retirement is rash and premature, especially considering the extensive programme only recently completed in the UK to produce the Jaguar GR.3.

This will leave India as the Jaguars main operator and stealth spy will be able to tell us what their plans are for the type.

A little recent digging has revealed to me just what extensive plans BAC, co-creators of the Jaguar, had for developing the type.

Fairly well known is the 1978 'Super Jaguar' which was to be re-winged, re-engined with RB-199'S and 'turned into a fighter in the F-16 class' as an interim type to serve the RAF until the aircraft we now know as the Eurofighter (then merely AST403) was ready for service.

Of course this never came to pass but then neither did a plethora of developments that were started before the Jaguar had even entered service at all!

As far back as 1971, three years before the RAF recieved its first aircraft, BAC was planning to replace the Jaguar and the Harrier in a single swoop by effectively combining the two aircraft. More accurately they sought to install the Pegaus engine (complete with PCB as developed for the cancelled P.1154) into a redesigned Jaguar airframe. This was project P.70, as illustrated below. As you can see the P.70 evolved to a radically different, but still clearly Jaguar based, twin boom design but the problem was that even with burning (or PCB) it was only just supersonic due to induced drag.

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After further study BAC concluded that the drag penalty of the Pegasus made the design not worth pursuing and that developments in modern lightweight lift engines, namely the Rolls-Allison XJ.99, coupled with the practical experience gained with the Short SC.1, Mirage IIIV and VFW-Fokker VAK 191B meant that something more akin to a 'minimum change' develoopment could be pursued.

Although 'minimum change' was the aim the actual developments were equally as radical in their final application. These are covered by designs in the P.71 range.

The baseline P.71 was to be a long term Jaguar development with two RB.199's and two XJ.99 lift engines which were mounted behind the cockpit in a lengthened fuselage. The RB.199'S were to be fitted with 'cascades' which were downward facing 'vents' through which the thrust of the RB199 could be diverted for vertical lift at the rear of the aircraft working in conjunction with the XJ.99's at the front. This arrangement can be seen on the second illustration which shows a much scaled down P.71 variant for the Royal Navy with just one RB.199 and one lift engine. A further version of the full sized P.71 was schemed with a single, cascade equipped, P&W F-100, just like the ones in the F-15 and F-16!

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One final development of this was the P.72, a lightweight fighter based on the scaled down RN version which differed only in respect of having a tailless delta configuration and makes an interesting comparison with todays LCA Tejas which matches it in most respects except for the lift engine. This comparison is made more interesting for me by the fact that India is such a major operator of the basic Jaguar today.

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source; British Secret Projects - Bombers since 1949 by Tony Buttler.

[edit on 30-9-2005 by waynos]

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[edit on 4/10/2005 by Mirthful Me]

I do remember a fly by wire version of the Jaguar , and also a version fitted with RB199`s


that aircraft was VERY fast at low level.


How long do you give it till the type is retired from the RAF?


IIRC , it was mooted a few years ago , then along came the events in the gulf (both of them) and the aircraft was `saved` along with the Bucceneer - which served very well , as a laser designator for PGB`s

I remember the ACT Jaguar with its absolutely huge LERX'S, this was used to develop the FBW system for the Typhoon (via the EAP)

I think you are mistaken about the RB.199 Jaguar though, although it was often schemed I am pretty sure none was ever actually flown as it would have required a major re-design of the rear fuselage.

The sad thing about the Jaguar in the RAF today is that although it is thoroughly effective, and acknowledged to be the RAF's MOST easily deployable asset, using a quarter of the support required to deploy the Tornado, its retirement date has been set as early 2007 merely in order to cut a few million from the defence budget, a crying shame.

Maybe i am wrong about the RB199 jaguar


I just remembered something funny about GW1


A bucceneer engaged a hovering HiND-D , and without any A2A missiles , engaged it with its only weapon - a 500lb bomb from the internal bomb bay!

a Testament to the skill of the bomber - they downed the copter !!

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It will be a sad day indeed the jaguar was and is a ellagant aircraft.
Always comes back to budgets..........pity.

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[edit on 4/10/2005 by Mirthful Me]

Waynos, I think the Jag you are referring to with the LERX's is on display in the Cosford museum in its RAE red white and blue livery! As an Ex RAF technical instructor I used to take my new course of trainees to the museum to show them different types of aircraft and aircraft constuction methord's so I got to see all the protypes kept there as well as the TSR 2 and as we were regular customers we were allowed into cockpits and under panels which was quite intresting as not a lot of people are normally allowed to see what is under the skin of these rare aircraft.

I do think the Jag was a nice aircraft but the old Lightning was a much more impressive beast in flight and incidently Cosford has an F6 on display as well as the prototypes and the high "T" tail which was bolted on to the prototype's so they could test which tail was the best for supersonic flight ( the low tail proved to be the best and was the one used )

Sv Out!

Good info, thank you

The alternate hight tail/low tail trials you mentioned were not carried out with the Lightning, but with the Short SB.5. This was a sort of low tech subsonic clone of the English Electric P.1 from which the Lightning was developed and was buillt to test out the aerodynamics of the P.1 just as you described

here is a pic of the SB.5 in T-tail configuration;


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as well as different tail configurations it also test different wing sweep angles. On the photo you can see the wing is less swept than on the lightning.

This other museum shot shows the SB.5 in low tail configuration and,although not entirely obvious from the angle, with very highly swept wings (you can see how the leading edge root is right up to the cockpit)



[edit on 30-9-2005 by waynos]

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[edit on 4/10/2005 by Mirthful Me]

Obviously you know the contents of the museum better than me Waynos! I did know that the protypes were built by Shorts but forgot to post it.....must be going senile or something!

I assume the reason that they flew these different tails was that there was not enough computer power or wind tunnel information avialable at the time otherwise why would they take the high risk obtain of actual flight trials?

Sv Out

I suppose it helps to bear in mind that when P.1 design started the Spitfire was still in RAF service. They simply hadn't a clue how aircraft that had been designed optimised for very high speeds with highly swept surfaces would behave at low speeds and building something like the SB.5 (as well as the many other types; Avro 707, HP-88, HP-115 etc) wasthe only way to find out. The real shame, for me, is that after all that resaearch and all that design experience we ended up with so little hardware at the end of it thanks to misguided Govt decisions. But thats another thread.

The LERX jaguar for you

Would you tell me how many LERX Jaguar was built and when it flew?

Only 1 was built - or more rather converted from airframe XX765 , and it first flew in 1981

www.rafmuseum.org.uk...

Jags very cool planes.
Shame to see them going.

Nice work Waynos.

Originally posted by waynos
This will leave India as the Jaguars main operator and stealth spy will be able to tell us what their plans are for the type.

India has no such plans to retire the Jaguar. The Russians had aggressively pushed their Su-34 bomber for sale to India. But no progress has been made and it is most likely dropped.

The Jaguar will be the main-stay of the IAF bomber fleet for a long time to come. India have just upgraded its Jaguar's to DARIN-2 standard (and the Mig-27's have been upgraded to a higher standard as well)

The Darin-2 upgrade consists of :

> Indigenous CAC/BCAC ... csirwebistad.org...
> new indigenous VOR/ILS/TACAN/RADALT
> India's DRDO's Tarang Mk.2 Electronic Counter Measures system and DU
> French Sextant MFD-66S
> Indigenous Multi channel digital video recorder
> New indigenous VHF/UHF
> Digital Map generator
> French Thales LRMTS (IS only)
> Israeli Elta EL/L-8222 internal SPJ
> Israeli Elta El-Op HUD
> Israeli Rafael Litening III Laser Designation Pod (the latest Typhoons will also feature this )

This upgrade for the Jaguar and the Mig-27 will take their avionics upto the MKI level.

I suggest you check out and some cool details on the indegenous CAC and other parts for the aveonics upgrade for the Jag >> csirwebistad.org... (Aeronautical society of India website)


Infact the 17 Darin-2 Jag's the IAF had ordered were delivered a month (~)back.

THIS IS ANOTHER MUST SEE PAGE FOR ALL THE PICS & INFO ON THE dARIN-2 JAGUAR >> great link

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Also, our Darin-1 standard Jags smoked the USAF in the second round of air exercises in Alaska where no handicap was given to either air force unlike the Cope India - 1 execrises in Gwalior, India where the F-15's got smoked badly by Mig-21 bisons.

Indian Air Force bombers returned to base today after wargames hosted by the US in Alaska in which they claimed to have penetrated through US air defence twice, it was disclosed at a “hot debriefing” at their base in Ambala this afternoon. The IAF had deployed six Jaguar deep-penetration strike aircraft to Alaska for the fortnight-long Exercise CooperativeCope Thunder 04-01 that ended on July 30.Air force sources said the Jaguars had penetrated throughdefensive cover and scored “direct hits” on ground targets in ranges in Alaska. The war games involved sorties from the Eielson and Elmendorf air force bases. The war games are hosted by the US Pacific Command Air Force.

link

another article >> Jag - Transatlantic thunder


Another cool article >> Jaguar & India > Inseperable for over 25 years

Regards,
Stealth Spy

P.S :

P.S :

DARIN stands for Digital Advanced Ranging and Inertial Navigation System
and the Indian Jaguar's NAVWASS stands for navigation and warfare attack system

credits to >> www.thehindubusinessline.com...

[edit on 4-10-2005 by Stealth Spy]

RAF Jaguar Pilot Training Comes To An End

While the Jag's own pilots will fiercely defend it from criticism there are plenty in the RAF who do not share our enthusiasm for the plane.

When I asked an RAF pilot about the Typhoon replacing the Jaguar at Waddington in the summer I asked whether there was any job that the Jaguar could still do better and he just replied that "You could replace the Jaguar with a paper aeroplane and not lose any capability."

Although, being a newly qualified Typhoon pilot from 17Sqn, he was probably biased.