Exercise Cobra Warrior, a Royal Air Force tactical training exercise, is now fully underway in the skies over Scotland and Northern England.
The Royal Air Force say here that this years iteration includes UK, Italian, German, United States of America and NATO involvement “which allows development of interoperability between the NATO members and fine tuning of tactics, techniques and procedures”.
“The 7th of September saw Mission 2 of the 3-week exercise undertaken which also coincided with a media day being held at RAF Waddington. RAF Waddington delivers the Cobra Warrior training package via the Air Space Warfare Centre and is also hosting the Italian detachment of Eurofighter Typhoons and the German ECR Tornados.
The exercise is also complemented by United States Air Force F-16s, F-15s, F35As and HH-60Gs (combat search and rescue) along with a NATO E-3A Sentry and Italian G550 providing command and control along with UK and Italian refuelling aircraft.”
The RAF add that the exercise is routinely undertaken twice a year but due to COVID-19 restrictions this month’s event is the first in several years and will pave the way for larger exercises in future.
Major Setini, Eurofighter Detachment Lead, was quoted as saying:
“This is one of the best exercises, not just in Europe, but in the world. It’s an opportunity to integrate with partner nations just to be ready and so we know each other in the best way possible. It’s a very challenging exercise and we are maximising the potential of our jets.”
According to a news release, the German detachment of six ECR Tornados, which notably bring Suppression of Enemy Air Defence capability to the exercise, is led by Detachment Commander Lieutenant Colonel Köllner.
Lieutenant Colonel Köllner, Detachment Commander, was also quoted:
“This is a very important exercise for our crews, we want to prepare with our allies and be able to stand together with the same procedures and thinking. The exercise is very realistic for us, planning together, working together, flying together. It also gives our people a focus, they know what they’re working for and we want to be ready for any situation that may come up.”
Good to see this is still going ahead to aid a good working balance between all participants, it would be nice to get to see some of the participants in low level training through the Welsh valleys 🏴 🤞 especially a German Tonka or two 👌
I am sure that current conflict in Ukraine made some air forces look to anti radar missiles again.
In Europe basically only exist the Tornados ECR of Italian and German AF with American HARM missiles.
I wrote about about Italy…
It is not the same having them in a generic aircraft and in an ECR.
Goes without saying the fitted for but not with uk doesn’t have them. We really are limited in our abilities.
Pity we don’t still have ALARM or some similar replacement. Would’ve been ideal to have an incremental maturation of that design with GPS guidance etc. As we’ve seen in Ukraine, such missiles are highly effective even against modern Russian SAM systems, and the ALARM had the loiter capability which the HARM does not. It was also used operationally plenty of times (and still used by the Saudis I believe). Missing capability from RAF/FAA aircraft at the moment.
RAF has been looking at a Meteor based solution apparently
That’d be a good idea, as @Gareth notes, HARMs have seemed to have a pretty major impact in Ukraine (pun intended), making space for the Bayraktars and suchlike.
In a sense ALARM was the first loitering ammunition, albeit without return back option of current ones.
The UK had a brilliant weapon in ALARM,maybe the MOD will revise the decision to retire them,like the Sea Eagle it was withdrawn because there were no funds or willpower to get them through a MLU.
An absolute disgrace. Any modern nation with armed forces like ours. Should have an SEAD capability as standard. F35 being the obvious platform of choice. Relying on allies is at best foolish.
Yeah, it is basically the missile needs updating, but no money available since all future wars will be against rag tag enemies so no anti radiation missiles necessary since an LGB can work too…
ALARM were retired long ago, i doubt they were not already disposed /recycled.
According to wikipedia, so obviously take this with a handful of salt, ALARM is still in service with Saudi Arabia.
Wonder if they’ve paid for an upgrade since it was retired from RAF service?
How many Typhoons can we spare for this exercise, or is our airborne contribution just the refueling aircraft?
Check ADSB Global, you see tons of UK military aircraft flying in the area.
Great to see the tornado again.
On the ECR variant how capable is it? Is it basically like a wild weasel F16 or does it being more to the party?
Does it do a bit of jamming like the growler?
I suppose the other question would be is it worth having a dedicated aircraft or could a podded solution be put on normal aircraft when needed.
ECR is a Wild Weasel type aircraft replacing the guns with ESM modules, ESM antennas in wing sponsoons and other antennas in the aircraft body. Reportedly Italian ECR have ECM modules but being in fuselage they are small and only for self protection, they are not a Growler type. Dedicaded ECM’s pods can be put at least in external wing pods.
4 HARM missiles can be emplyed per aircraft. Remember that in extreme the RAF Tornado could take 9 ALARM, but that was a extreme setup.