The Tornado crews intensely practiced using the built-in terrain-following radar (TFR), which enabled them to fly hands-off on autopilot at 200 feet above the desert floor. Night-vision goggles were available to some crews later in the war, but in the early stages, the Tornado pilots were offered a hand-held system that nobody used. Unlike the forests and plains of northern Europe, the undulating sand dunes of Saudi Arabia didn’t give the TFR a very good radar return, and so the radar altimeter (radalt) became a vital tool for avoiding the ground.
“We trained to either cross the runway to cut it up, or to fly down it, and it had two delivery modes: 7.6 seconds or 19, for the two rates of spread,” explains Steve Warren-Smith. “JP233 had to be delivered at around 160 feet, wings level, with no G or angle-of-bank. So you had to fly with very precise parameters for it to be delivered effectively. If you were too high some of the sub-munitions could drift off downwind. Over a peacetime range is one thing, but to do it over an airfield in the pitch black where everyone’s firing at you is quite another!”
An added complication was that the TFR was calibrated for 200 feet, and it wasn’t capable of flying the aircraft at the 160-foot height that was optimum for employing the JP233. It meant the pilot needed to deselect terrain following and hand-fly the aircraft with a radar height hold of 160 feet on the radar altimeter, in the pitch black of night, without night-vision goggles or a forward-looking infrared, if they were to achieve an optimum release height.
So this is how to do it![&o]
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38745/how-british-tornados-used-a-special-weapon-to-ravage-saddams-airfields-in-daring-desert-storm-raids
