available to all military aircrew as well as
some other agencies’ aircraft that regularly
operate at low level, such as police and
Maritime & Coastguard Agency helicopters.
Using CADS, pilots can manage
decon iction with other sorties at the planning
stage thanks to a ‘play through’ function
which alerts aircrew to potential con icts and
dangers, signi cantly increasing awareness
and ight safety in uncontrolled airspace.
It also contains detailed information on all
hazards (such as masts and tall cranes),
NOTAMs and weather forecasts.
Before a Tornado sortie departs, the
mission planning information is transferred
from TAMPA to the aircraft where it can be
displayed in the cockpit. As a backup, shouldsystems fail, a printed copy of the maps and
other mission information is also carried.
Each sortie is planned to meet as
many training requirements as possible. A
squadron leader explained: “We don’t just
take off from Marham [for example] and y
at low level; we go low level where it best
suits our training. We [often] y at medium
level not just for transiting, but to practise
medium-level scenarios en route before we
drop into low level.”STAY LOW, STAY SAFE
While some military air arms view low-level
tactics as outdated and from the Cold War
era, Tim Davies believes they’re still relevant
today. Indeed, he takes the view ‘stay low,stay safe’ to avoid being detected by the
enemy and reduce the chance of coming
under attack.
RAF Tornado pilots practise ying as
low as 100ft above ground level (AGL) as
part of operational low ying (OLF) training.
Planning is meticulous and ying these
types of sorties is very demanding.
A former Tornado GR4 pilot, explained:
“The lower you go the more the pilot must
concentrate on ying the aircraft. The rst time
[is] a complete adrenaline rush, which you
must dumb down to free up your capacity.”
He added: “The RAF syllabus for OLF
training is that it’s rst own as a single jet,
then as a two-ship and then a four-ship...
For an OLF crew the pilot’s focus is not to
hit the ground and to terrain-hug as much
as possible.
“You’re doing OLF for a reason – to
minimise your radar pick-ups during target
ingress or egress. Flying at between 100ft
and 200ft you focus on 45° each side of
the nose and make sure you’re ying as
accurately as possible.”
An RAF pilot on exchange with the US
Navy compared OLF training in a two-seat
Tornado GR4 with the single-seat F/A-18E
Super Hornet: “You can’t y that low in a
single-seat F/A-18E and perform the same
tasks as well, so we y more between 200
and 500ft.”
Recalling the terrain following radar (TFR)
on the Tornado, he said: “TFR was used at
night or in poor weather. You could also have
[it on] while manually ying so that it would
not feed in to the autopilot but still go to the
ight director dot in the cockpit. If our velocity
vector was on or above the ight director dot,
you would manually avoid the terrain ahead.
“An issue with the TFR is the ‘g’ limits: it
utilises a lot less than we could use manually,
so I can terrain mask more effectively ying
manually. If it was a nice clear sky at night on
my NVGs I would disengage the TFR from the
autopilot and y manually. We still had a TFR
display in the cockpit, so I can still see if my
jet is going to encroach my MSD [Minimum
Separation Distance – a set distance all
around the aircraft where all terrain and
obstacles must be avoided]. I can delay my
manoeuvre to be more aggressive with the jet.
“At 100ft, if you lose concentration it’s just
over a second before you impact the ground
if it’s at – and that doesn’t take into account
rising terrain ahead of you. An OLF sortie is58 Aviation News incorporating Jets December 2018
Greece ordered 36 F-4E Phantom IIs in 1972
and a further 18 four years later. By 1979 all
had been delivered. All Hellenic Air Force
fast jet aircrew are trained to y at low level.Flying at low level is challenging
but is eased by having two
aircrew to share the burden.A Tornado GR4 in the Mach Loop – the purple rhododendrons bloom for only a few weeks at
the end of May and make a colourful background for photos.