History
History
The Adour is a turbofan engine developed primarily to power the Anglo-French SEPECAT Jaguar fighter-bomber, achieving its first successful test run in 1968. It is produced in versions with or without reheat.
As of July 2009 more than 2,800 Adours have been produced, for over 20 different armed forces with total flying hours reaching 8 million in December 2009.[2] The U.S. military designation for this engine is the F405-RR-401 (a derivative of the Adour Mk 871), which is currently used to power the fleet of Boeing / BAE Systems T-45 Goshawk trainer jets of the United States Navy.
Variants
Bench enginesTen prototype engines were built for testing by both Rolls-Royce and Turbomeca.[3]Flight development enginesDevelopment engines for the Jaguar prototypes, 25 built.
Reheated (afterburning)
- Adour Mk 101 – First production variant for the Jaguar, 40 built.
- Adour Mk 102 – Second production variant with the addition of part-throttle reheat.
- Adour Mk 104 – Much more powerful version available in early 1980s, with higher operating temperature (700° vs 640), capable of about 5,500 lb. dry and 8,000 lb. with max A/B (static). While it was only marginally better in military thrust at take off, this engine improved the Jaguar’s low power-to weight ratio and enabled much better performance, with 10% more thrust at take off (with after burner engaged), and up to 27% more thrust in high subsonic cruise, helping the Jaguar in its typical flight envelope (low level, high speed attack).
- Adour Mk 106 – Replacement for the Jaguar’s Mk104 engine (developed from the Adour 871) with a reheat section. The RAF refitted its fleet with this engine as part of the GR3 upgrade.In May 2007, following the retirement of the last 16 Jaguars from No. 6 Squadron RAF, based at RAF Coningsby, the Adour 106 has been phased out of RAF service.
- Adour Mk 801 – For Mitsubishi F-1 & T-2 (JASDF)
- TF40-IHI-801A – Licence-built version of Mk 801 by Ishikawajima-Harima for Mitsubishi F-1 & T-2 (JASDF)
- Adour Mk 804 – Licence-built by HAL for Indian Air Force phase 2 Jaguars
- Adour Mk 811 – Licence-built by HAL for Indian Air Force phase 3 to 6 Jaguars; rated at 8400 lbs of maximum thrust. Archived 22 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine BAe-built Jaguars were initially powered with two Adour 804E turbofans.
- Adour Mk 821 – Engine upgrade of Mk804 and Mk811 engines, was under development for the Indian Air Force Jaguar aircraft.