Taiwan to lease AV-8B fighters from US, US-China antagonism heats up, Tang, Wolfowitz meet

Borghead, the history of the Harrier does not bear out your dismissive comments. The viability of the Harrier as a fighter has more to do with the training of the pilots and the quality of missiles and electronics carried by said Harriers, then it does with the formal performance statistics written down in Jane's or your favorite military book.

Royal Navy and British army Harriers (effectively equivalent to the AV-8A, the predecessor of the AV-8B) trounced Argentine Mirage fighters, French built aircraft arguably as good then as anything the Chinese have now. If the Chinese improved their training and had modern electronics and missiles equivalent to what we have, the fight would be more even, but I would not count the Harrier out - all other things being equal.

Again, the one advantage the Harrier has over other jet aircraft is that it can be hidden out in the boondocks, dispersed, so as to avoid being wiped out on the airfield, as will surely happen to most of Taiwan's air force if China decided to do so. Thirty Harriers may not be able to do much in the face of overwhelming numbers, but it is significantly better than nothing at all.

All this is predicated on the caveat, of course, that I don't know how well Taiwanese pilots are trained, and I do not know what quality of electronics or missiles these Harriers will be equipped with.

The harriers defeated the French Mirage 1A, thats an early third generation fighter jet roughly equivalent to an upgraded Phantom. If a fight is to occur between a Mirage 2000 and a harrier, the harrier would be destroyed in a few seconds because of its lack of speed, maneuverability, targeting systems, hardpoints,,,etc. The Harrier was a good solid fighter jet back in the late 70s early 80s but nowadays its obsolete as a front line fighter.

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