Why we need Aircraft.
An aircraft is just a means of transport - in Harrier's case transport for a weapons system. It is fine having STOL/VTOL capability as long as you have a weapon capable of the task. The RAF historically has had good(ish) aircraft but inadequate weapons to put on them. The Harrier's job in the cold war was to kill tanks - however since the advent of ERA, the only way that a harrier could kill a tank was to fly over the top and drop a WWII 1K iron bomb on it! (Not good for survivability at low level - cluster bombs are not very good against ERA). Therefore is the A10 more effective given a simpler/cheaper airframe but with lots more weapons of better killing potential? A10s have operated from the short runways in the Stan! Perhaps the best CAS system for Afghanistan however is the B52 (it was during the "conquest" in 2002). Old platform, but carries a hell of a lot of JDAMs an awful long way and can stay for a long time on task until needed. We can maybe make the arguement that Eurofighter is too expensive to carry its weapon systems - should we have spent more on the weapon and less on the platform? The choice is yours, although our Lordships think that we have more cudos with a "sexy" new fighter rather than having a good weapons system for it.