All designs are a compromise, as has already been said here.
Harrier was no exception but the requirement/solution balance was, frankly, one of the most ingenious pieces of British aerospace engineering going. Yes the designers at HS had many issues to contend with, particularly the constant fear of it being a concept that wouldn't get off the ground (no pun intended). The USMC buy (with no small thanks to JF's stunning displays of STOVL derring do) made many sit up and take note and probably saved it.
As a CAS platform the A-10 is hard to beat in role from the pure sense however, I still believe that if you take the A-10 as the perfect CAS aircraft on one end of the scale and something like the F-15E at the other end, Harrier was the perfect hybrid and actually spanned a much wider remit than most aircraft designed in the 1960s. Fast (not supersonic but certainly fast enough), agile, flexible and with eye-watering serviceability compared to pretty much every FL jet we've had in RAF service since the 1970s.
Dave Morgan of Falklands fame once said if he had to go to war again in a jet it'd be a Harrier every time. She's gone now but an F-35B is where I'd be at, given the choice.
Last edited by ICBM; 16th Jun 2012 at 20:04.