Salute Orca!
Well, now, a real attack puke and has some time in the Bug landing on really big boats, cat shots in a calm sea with no moon and visible lights, and.... neatstuff for the wannabe folks to do it for real. Ya gotta love it. A good Marconi HUD is always nice on a dark night.
We Yanks are always amazed how close/low the RAF and RN folks go with the fuel. So guess that's the one approach/try or else mentality. Considering the size of your island and all the old strips there, I guess that's "acceptable" for a divert. My friend Waldo with hisHarrier exchange tour said that the good thing about the GR3 ( tink that was the one) was you could put down on the soccer field a kilo away if things were tense. You would take flak from the boss, but the jet was still in one piece, and so were you, heh heh.
So USAF vs RAF standards WRT fuel are significant. Only time I ever saw variations was in combat, and then we reverted to your numbers. The grunts needed the ord when in close quarters, and I was fortunate to fly jets that had the gas ( A-7D) or could land almost any place ( the A-37).
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I have a hard time with the Harrier numbers posted by the Brits on these forums compared with the F-35 ( aka Stubby, when you see the thing with an F-15 next to it. Looks like the same plane but short and fat!) . Even if TSFC is better for that big motor in the Harrier, the Stubbie carries a helluva load of gas, all internal. So loiter should be great if you cruise at a reasonable speed someplace near the tgt or other area of interest. In other words, you don't runaround in supercriuse or charge in at 0.9M when 200 miles from your station/tgt/orbit. A lot of combat effectiveness depends upon the operaters and their procedures and skill. The public relations brochures are usually optimistic, but the mil spec numbers are usually bare minimums. Our experience in the A-7 and A-37 was we could beat the textbook range by 50% most days.
Good to converse, Orca. Need some old farts with Harrier time and hopefully some Falkland, Storm and such experience.
Gums sends...
P.S. In case anyone is intersted, I live 60 miles west of that big storm that just hit. Went thru VooDoo checkout training at Tyndall back in 1966. Our weak side of the storm was ho hum, and all is well here. Over there it is really bad.