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40 years of performance

We're celebrating one of the most successful combat jets

Having entered service in 1979, the Panavia Tornado remains Europe's largest military aircraft co-operation programme.

Renowned as one of the most successful post-war combat platforms it was designed to excel at low-level penetration. Its outstanding multi-role capability and performance enabled the redundancy of other aircraft in existing fleets of the adopting air forces.

Farewell footage of the three-ship flypast tour of RAF Tornado GR4 Jets

The power of Tornado

As a twin engine aircraft, Tornado’s power comes from two RB199 engines developed by Turbounion, a European engine collaboration formed of Rolls-Royce, MTU and Avio.

The RB199 is a three-spool, re-heated turbofan engine specifically designed and tailored to meet Tornado’s propulsion requirements. Research and development taken from the supersonic airliner Concorde contributed to the development and final design of the RB199 and the engine control units. This resulted in an extremely compact engine, permitting a smaller airframe design and incorporating afterburning for an unprecedented thrust increase of nearly 50%.

1979

Entry into service

2,500

Engines delivered

7M+

Flying hours achieved

16,000

LBF thrust range with reheat

A History of service with the Royal Air Force Fleet

Rolls-Royce has been providing the power to the RAF Tornado fleet since the first was delivered on 1 July 1980.

The RB199 engine was also used in the Experiment Aircraft Programme (EAP) demonstrator assembled at Warton in Lancashire, England, and the early prototype Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft.

Since entering service with the RAF, Tornado has gone on to play a vital role in times of peace and conflict, accumulating over 3.3M engine flying hours. Affectionately known as “Tonka” by the RAF, Tornado has completed some of the longest range combat missions conducted by the RAF since the Falkands’ conflict.

As a growing capability in the Cold War, the Tornado proved its combat readiness in 1991 as part of Operation Granby (Gulf War 1) and Operation Telic (Gulf War 2) from 2003 to 2009, as well as Operation Herrick (Afghanistan) from 2002 to 2014, becoming the first choice for Air Commanders for missions through Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, Syria and Falkland Islands.

Since Operation Ellamy in Libya, the Tornado Force has drawn down towards its planned out of service date in readiness for the transition to Typhoon and Lightning. However the need to maintain a constant deployment for Operation Shader in Iraq saw squadrons reformed ahead of a planned withdrawal date of 31 March, 2019

“The reliability of the RB199 has enabled millions of hours of virtually continuous operations allowing us to take the fight to the enemy.”

Air Commodore David Bradshaw

Lightning Force Commander, Royal Air Force Marham

Tornado followed by Typhoon and Lightning

Following the retirement of the RAF’s Tornado, two new EJ200 powered Typhoon squadrons and the incoming F-35B Lightning will take over and build upon the military effect that has been delivered by Tornado in almost four decades of service.

Paul Craig, Rolls-Royce Director of Services at Rolls-Royce Defence, said: “There has always been a huge amount of pride in the RB199. Many of the people that have worked tirelessly to support the engine in service actually worked on the assembly and test of those same engines earlier in their career.

“We have pioneered many of our service innovations on the RB199 programme and look forward to continuing to partner with the RAF as we apply those cutting edge technologies to the next generation of combat aircraft.”