Panavia Tornado Combat Aircraft

Relatively rare amongst fighter aircraft, the RB.199 is fitted with thrust reversers to decrease the distance required to safely land. To fully deploy the thrust reverser during landings, the yaw damper is connected to the steering of the nosewheel to provide greater stability.
In August 1974, the first RB.199 powered flight of a prototype Tornado occurred; the engine completed its qualification tests in late 1978. The final production standard engine met both reliability and performance standards, though the development cost had been higher than predicted, in part due to the ambitious performance requirements. At the time of the Tornado's introduction to service, the turbine blades of the engine suffered from a shorter life span than desired, which was rectified by the implementation of design revisions upon early-production engines. Several uprated engines were developed and used on both the majority of Tornado ADVs and Germany's Tornado ECRs.
• Upgrades
In the 1990s, the RAF's GR1 fleet was extensively re-manufactured as Tornado GR4s. Upgrades on Tornado GR4s included a FLIR (Forward-Looking InfraRed), a wide-angle HUD (Heads-Up Display), improved cockpit displays, NVG (Night Vision Goggles) capabilities, new avionics, and a Global Positioning System receiver. The upgrade eased the integration of new weapons and sensors which were purchased in parallel, including the Storm Shadow cruise missile, the Brimstone anti-tank missile, Paveway III laser-guided bombs and the RAPTOR reconnaissance pod was integrated. The first flight of a Tornado GR4 was on 4 April 1997, on 31 October 1997 the RAF accepted the first delivery. In 2005, the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) opted to have their Tornado IDSs undergo a series of upgrades to become equivalent to the RAF's GR4 configuration.