Surplus USMC AV-8B - Article Suggesting Taiwan May Acquire
 

Nothing official but nevertheless interesting technical detail on upgrades the USMC AV-8Bs got - now down to 58 in the active fleet.

The Time For Taiwan To Adopt Surplus AV-8B Harriers Is Now (thedrive.com)

The UK could probably use some of those to supplement their carrier F-35Bs.

As nice as they once were I think the world has moved on from these somewhat.

The AV-8B is a excellent complication to confound attackers of an area such as Taiwan. It still has relevance for making it impossible to strike all defence assets in a single preemptive attack. Worth it's weight in gold I would think. Yes, F-35B's are great, but if there is a single critical defense system that is prone to groundings... it is nice to have a backup.

The more difficult part for Taiwan is probably the spare parts and other logistics to keep them flying year after year.

Joli,

After ridding themselves of the Harrier....to go back on that would require many very senior persons having to admit they were quite wrong on several decisions....that is not going to. happen.

Gotcha. Spoken in the knowledge of how it might bruise egos, etc.

Even so, if I were a carrier captain, I’d be happy to fill up my half-empty decks with some of those beauties, especially if they are from the ‘help-yourself’ bin. With Harrier DNA and updated capabilities, and virtually free to boot, what’s not to like?

PS Sharing them out with Taiwan, of course!

Absolutely nothing.........

In any event those airships that made the original mindbogglingly stupid decision to axe them, have probably long since retired. Anyone making the decision to bring them back can say "well I would not have got rid of them in the first place".

What's not to like? Lack of spares, logistics, trained pilots and trained maintainers. Lack of infrastructure. Lack of money.

All of which can be overcome, especially if the acquisition price in negligible. If Taiwan wants the F35, I suspect they’ll get it, making the Harrier a stopgap till then.

Everything can be overcome with the right amount of cash, but this would be a lot of cash for an obsolete capability.

The lack of ILS was a problem sometimes as was the lack of steps to access the cockpit.
I fortunately had a stepladder handy the last time one arrived at Farnborough.

Like buying an big petrol engined 80/90s saloon. Almost free but an absolute fortune to run and keep on the road.
Some of those gr9 airframes were knackered post Afghan campaign.

I was very much on the periphery of RAF Harrier, but very close to SHAR from 85-93. Long before I left it was obvious to me the RN didn't give a stuff about it. The tipping point (to me) was when I asked DGA(N) HQ why they'd not made any bids for avionic support funding in LTC90. I was told in no uncertain manner, by an officer I knew very well, that it was quite deliberate so best to butt out and let it run down. I'm not sure front line agreed. Not one officer I spoke to there agreed, and most didn't realise there was something going on.

Ironically, the chap who fought hardest for SHAR in the aircraft project office was a superb Group Captain logistician, who'd spent some time in Germany on Tornado and had a penchant for a certain Swiss restaurant in Rose Street in Edinburgh. He and his bosses were gobsmacked at the indifference, not least because the Mid Life Upgrade to FRS2 was ongoing. I remember him asking me why they (RN) would not want to support a brand new radar that's costing them £xM a pop. It was a very odd period.

The airframes were not stressed much at all by HERRICK. The FI from normal daily training ops at home was far greater.

The beauty of such an aircraft is simple, like a submarine, Team X has to consider their effect whether they exist or not. A distributed force of F-35B and AV-8Bs around the rock makes for a major complication to the other side of the net. Whether the aircraft are fit for purpose or their statistics on that have to be assumed, so just having them in hiding but announced is a pause to the other player. Now Russia went a bit far with their "mighty military machine!", there are limits to how much you can remove from the program and not ending up looking silly.

Yes, spot on. Many don’t realise that Sea Harrier crumbled from within. The lack of support for it, the dwindling numbers of airframes and people (pilots and techies) all led to its demise. Also, within, the FAA failed to keep the churn of its pilots going and their demographic turned into another factor where they simply hadn’t refreshed their cadre with younger bods. The move to Joint Force Harrier was inevitable in the end.

Then the big affordability questions of SDSR10 sealed the fates of the GR9 and the “through deck cruisers”. Neither of the Services could afford either and so made the decision to scrap both to maintain other capabilities, knowing that QE/POW and F35 was coming and was going to need that money.

Of course there were howls of anguish by the VSTOL bearded aviator community. Blaming so-called “Crab Air”, but actually in reality the fleet had rotted from the inside out and the final chop was a purely financial decision to protect the new boats and the Gen 5 fighters that would fly from them. Even then, the vertical take off and landing loons had their way by insisting on the most inferior of the 3 variants in the F35B - so yet again, they committed one last act of self-frag that we live with today. Everyone knows that the C model with cats and traps was the choice of champions, but that decision too hangs around the necks of the SHar/Har gang.

PS. Also, to add, that the more capable C is “buy 15 and get one free”, compared to the B too…:ugh:

So true. The decision to buy the B model (and not enough of them) was a flawed decision. Personally, I would have gone for the most capable A model for the RAF, and let the RN fight over whether they wanted B or C. Sure, two C model carriers would have been more expensive, but cat and traps affords so much more capability as a fighting force than a pair of boats that can't embark any meaningful integrated capability. But, at the end of the day, it came down to money, in-fighting and politics.

As yet has there been any occasion when the vertical capabilities of the F-35B have shown a clear advantage over conventional aircraft?

SHAR 2 with 4 x AMRAAM and Link 16 was a pretty capable carrier borne aircraft. But GR9 without any radar and only eyeball missiles...??

They can fit on a tiny Wasp class assault ship . . .