Originally Posted by
Easy Street
As well as the aforementioned reasons, the down wash is so brutal that it needs to stay high until it’s over a suitably prepared surface. Those are expensive; you wouldn’t want to make them any bigger to allow for expansive low-speed manoeuvring at 20ft.
Then call me old fashioned but what is the point of the vertical jumping F35 if it needs a prepared strip to put it on, surely the reason in having a vertical capable aircraft such as the Harrier was its ability to operate off rough uneven unprepared ground, If you need a slab of concrete to take off from, does that not just defeat the point?..
An observation made when the Harrier doing its debut at Paris all those years back had the engine failure and crash landed onto the French Jump jets specially prepared concrete base when they were showing the advantages of the Harrier over the opposition.
see 40 seconds in
https://www.britishpathe.com/video/p...uery/Lightning