Nice to see my dad’s old squadron in the news...
Don’t forget the harriers were used to defend Miami in true lies!
The reason the Harrier is still around is because there is no better weapons platform for close air support for the Marines.
It can land and takeoff vertically anywhere, fly 900 miles at 662 mph and carry 15,000 pounds of bombs and rockets. Oh, and is has a 25mm cannon.
Eventually the F-35B STOVL will replace it.
“... highest accident rate....”. That is a meaningless statistic and represents sloppy reporting and logic. In any ranking there will always be a “highest” and “lowest”. What is its accident rate? Is it acceptable given the aircraft’s mission and complexity?
VSOL aircraft are simply going to have a higher accident rate then conventional
What my husband wouldn’t give to strap one of those puppies back on for a joyride.
Can’t help but wonder if the lower fatality numbers are a result of lower monthly flight hours due to military budget cuts.
Regardless, the harriers are still the same ones my husband flew before he 1st came off active duty in 1998. Those birds were falling apart back then!
Democrat presidents and usurpers suck.
It’s far better than the F-35 for the USMC. It’s not a tempting aircraft for the USAF theater commander to want to Shanghai for non-CAS missions.
And for CAS, its ridiculous to pretend a 35 can do the job of a Harrier.
We have a friend who was an engineer on the first-generation Hornets. They had a problem with stress cracks at the base of the vertical stabilizers.
Turns out it was the Marine pilots frequently taking them to maximum-G turns to show their Marine-ness.
I know the major defense contractors— BAE, Lockheed, et. al— are moving toward the idea of unmanned (pilotless) aircraft. When you think about it it does seem antiquated to have a person sitting inside controlling it, with all the human factors problems involved. Due to AI and robotics technology the job of pilot is on the endangered list. Sad but inevitable.
L8R
Now 6K flight-hours is only 40% of it's service life?
That's just damned scary, even if you've SLEP'd them.
I would think that the A-10 would have been a better fit for Marines than anything else. With that said I have never heard of the Marines having used them.
BTTT