Ubiquitous Harriers.

Riain

Banned
I, among others, have AH delusions of Britian with CVAs, TSR2s and British fighters in the F4/F14/F15 vein. In such a TL would the Harrier become a ubiquious light attack/fighter? With the TSR/Buccaneer/AH-Superfighter taking care of British high end fighting tasks would the low end be done entierly by Harriers? Would Sea Harriers come into service for Commando/ASW carriers during the early/mid 70s? Would the Jaguar programme be replaced (for want of a better word) by another 200 GR3s? Would such big numbers of Harriers in British service, and assuming the USMC buys their 100 or so, mean that the Harrier would be adopted in numbers by other countires around the world?
 

Cockroach

Riain said:
I, among others, have AH delusions of Britian with CVAs, TSR2s and British fighters in the F4/F14/F15 vein. In such a TL would the Harrier become a ubiquious light attack/fighter? With the TSR/Buccaneer/AH-Superfighter taking care of British high end fighting tasks would the low end be done entierly by Harriers? Would Sea Harriers come into service for Commando/ASW carriers during the early/mid 70s? Would the Jaguar programme be replaced (for want of a better word) by another 200 GR3s? Would such big numbers of Harriers in British service, and assuming the USMC buys their 100 or so, mean that the Harrier would be adopted in numbers by other countires around the world?
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In such a world the 'Harrier' is actually the much more capable Hawker P.1154 super-sonic VTOL fighter.
 

Jukra

Riain said:
I, among others, have AH delusions of Britian with CVAs, TSR2s and British fighters in the F4/F14/F15 vein. In such a TL would the Harrier become a ubiquious light attack/fighter? With the TSR/Buccaneer/AH-Superfighter taking care of British high end fighting tasks would the low end be done entierly by Harriers? Would Sea Harriers come into service for Commando/ASW carriers during the early/mid 70s? Would the Jaguar programme be replaced (for want of a better word) by another 200 GR3s? Would such big numbers of Harriers in British service, and assuming the USMC buys their 100 or so, mean that the Harrier would be adopted in numbers by other countires around the world?
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How about this one:

In 1970's, when attention is turned into conventional defense of Europe again, Britain decides that it's time to turn RAF into meat grinder. The reasons are manyfold. For nuclear war it's the deterrence which counts. In conventional conflict most RAF aircraft are tied into vulnerable base infrastructure. For support of expeditionary activities VSTOL makes things easier, as they can be easily ferried with merchant aircraft and can operate from hasty forward strips.

Furthermore, there's the lessons of Vietnam War. Dogfighting is important and will become even more important after next generation of IR missiles comes on line. Thus Sea Harrier will become not only FAA, but also RAF fighter aircraft. For early eighties an updated Sea Harrier with ability to use SkyFlash missiles will come on line.
 

Riain

Banned
I'd think something a bit like this: The RAF and RN agree to develop a long-range, all-weather fighter, echewing exoctic ideas such as the Hawker P1154 they settle on a conventional twin turbofan, two crew fighter armed with Blue Jay, SRAAM and 30mm cannon. Thus the RAF and RN had their 'high' mix from the late 60s well sorted. However they had requirements for a smaller, less expensive and more flexible aircraft for smaller, Commando and ASW carriers and close air support. The aircraft they chose to develop was the Hawker P1127. The inital GR1 Harier was a success so the RN developed their own version, the Osprey, for the 3 new ASW carriers based on the 60s 'command cruiser' concept. In the 70s the joint light attack aircraft project with France finds too much divergence during the project definition phase, and as a result the RAF orders 200 more Harriers instead. The USMC also orders 108 AV8's, giving a total of some 400 Harriers produced by the early 1970s. With large scale production of several variants the price is driven down and several countries order the type.
 

Jason

Riain said:
I, among others, have AH delusions of Britian with CVAs, TSR2s and British fighters in the F4/F14/F15 vein. In such a TL would the Harrier become a ubiquious light attack/fighter? With the TSR/Buccaneer/AH-Superfighter taking care of British high end fighting tasks would the low end be done entierly by Harriers? Would Sea Harriers come into service for Commando/ASW carriers during the early/mid 70s? Would the Jaguar programme be replaced (for want of a better word) by another 200 GR3s? Would such big numbers of Harriers in British service, and assuming the USMC buys their 100 or so, mean that the Harrier would be adopted in numbers by other countires around the world?
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Interestingly there was a proposal in the early 90s that the RAF should do away with its jags and replace them with extra harriers whilst the army would purchase extra attack helicopters to allow harriers to concentrate on the jag-type missions
 

Riain

Banned
By the 90s the Harriers was a US plane, the Brits had signed over design leadership to McDD and the Harrier became a VTOL bomb truck.
 

Bill Garvin

Riain said:
I, among others, have AH delusions of Britian with CVAs, TSR2s and British fighters in the F4/F14/F15 vein. In such a TL would the Harrier become a ubiquious light attack/fighter? With the TSR/Buccaneer/AH-Superfighter taking care of British high end fighting tasks would the low end be done entierly by Harriers? Would Sea Harriers come into service for Commando/ASW carriers during the early/mid 70s? Would the Jaguar programme be replaced (for want of a better word) by another 200 GR3s? Would such big numbers of Harriers in British service, and assuming the USMC buys their 100 or so, mean that the Harrier would be adopted in numbers by other countires around the world?
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You're not solving the basic problem of the Harrier, its short legs. To get a decent payload either means flying it as a normal aircraft (then why bother) or putting in a more powerful engine which burns more fuel and this offsets the extra payload.

The dispersed field argument doesn't work either, sure one can fly Harriers out of a back yard but they have to be supplied with fuel and munitions and that isn't easy. In effect, the Harriers can be dispersed but their field support cannot.

There are very good reasons why the whole Harrier concept never got any real success. The only application that makes any sense is flying them off amphibious assault ships which is why the Marines bought them. Most times the numbers just don't add up.
 
TheMann

TheMann

I don't know if Britain ever had the money for 2/3 CVAs in the USN mold, but anyway, one would assume that the Brits would just use the USN aircraft, which were well proven. F-4 Phantoms stayed in RAF service until 1993, why the Brits would spend the money to develop their own when the US already has a great unit is just not there.

The TSR.2 was as I recall, a bomber and interceptor first. So why would the TSR.2 be a carrier-borne plane?
 

Riain

Banned
Why would the Brits buy from the US when they have a fantastic aviation industry that will give them a plane that does exactly what they want, rather than buying a US plane.

The short legs isn't important when you have TSR2s, Buccaneers and F4/14/15 esque fighters to do the fancy stuff. The gap in capability is for the handy workhorse that can be stationed close to the action, on small, local airfields and off airfeilds altogether.
 

Bill Garvin

Riain said:
The short legs isn't important when you have TSR2s, Buccaneers and F4/14/15 esque fighters to do the fancy stuff. The gap in capability is for the handy workhorse that can be stationed close to the action, on small, local airfields and off airfeilds altogether.
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It's very important. A loaded Harrier's range using VTOL is so short that all the Russians had to do was track one by radar to where it landed then dump a salvo from a BM-21 battery on to the vicinity. The Harrier force wouldn't have lasted 12 hours and everybody knew it. As I said, there's good reason why nobody ever got serious about Harriers outside the amphibious community.
 

Barry Bull

Donor
Bill Garvin said:
The dispersed field argument doesn't work either, sure one can fly Harriers out of a back yard but they have to be supplied with fuel and munitions and that isn't easy. In effect, the Harriers can be dispersed but their field support cannot.
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Actually, field support can be dispersed and the RAF has practised this several times during NATO exercises. Also, Sweden has done this for a long time with their SAAB J-35 and JA-37 during the cold war, using Highways as runways and dispersed support infrasturcture in the rural areas due to the widespread availability of technical staff scattered around the country.
 

burmafrd

Banned
You can disperse and support a harrier force as long as you have good ground transport capability. You keep the Harriers at least 25 to 30 miles behind the lines and you do not have to worry about anything except aerial attack. Have them fly low once they get into friendly territory and that prevents them being tracked. Good camoflauge and procedures should do a pretty good job of hiding them. NOW the real key is do the Russians or whoever have satelite capabilty. That is the one sure way to find them. If that is the case then you would have to move the Harriers around every few days and that causes a lot more trouble as regards support.
 

Riain

Banned
The RAF thought they were survivable enough to order the follow-on GR5 in the 80s, that will do it for me. I also agree with those who said that Harriers will be zooming around at low level, as would hundreds of other planes and helicopters of all stripes on the central front, not to mention millions of troops and hundreds of thousands of fighting vehicles. So the simple BM-21 salvo solution to the Harrier ground ops would be far from simple in reality. Even in a purely Brit scenario the enemy would be under the pump from TSR2s, AW-BVR fighters and everything else and would be hard pressed to supress the Harrier ground ops on a sustained basis.

What's more if the RAF/RN/USMC had bought 450 by the early 70s I daresay there would be other big orders for it, perhaps the Shah's Iran among others in the Mid East for starters. The more operators the more operational innovators for this aircraft there are likely to be, and it would be used in different and useful ways that IOTL.
 

Jason

Bill Garvin said:
It's very important. A loaded Harrier's range using VTOL is so short that all the Russians had to do was track one by radar to where it landed then dump a salvo from a BM-21 battery on to the vicinity. The Harrier force wouldn't have lasted 12 hours and everybody knew it. As I said, there's good reason why nobody ever got serious about Harriers outside the amphibious community.
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No, the main reason for the extremely limited number of nations using harriers other than as carrier aircraft is the fact they are extremely difficult to fly; even in the RAF only the most experienced pilots are felt safe to fly them.

You are also, I feel, underestimating the range of harriers, it wasn't as short as you seem to think and strangely the RAF and British army actually expected the harriers to remain operational for a lot longer than 12 hours (but hey, what would we know, we only used the damn things).
EDIT: Combat radius of GR1 was 250 miles roughly, GR3 350 miles, that's full combat load and no extra fuel tanks-ok not the greatest in the world but still more than the BM21 range of 15 miles :)

Harriers are damn useful assault aircraft and they are good at scaring the willies off an enemy, came in very handy in Bosnia in the 90s. The Bosnian Serbs weren't that fussed when we tried to get them to behave by having all manner of fighters fly over but for some reason call up a couple of harriers and have them hover overhead and they always saw reason;)
 
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The Dean

Supplying the Harriers in the ground war role is no more difficult than keeping AS90, MLRS and Challengers bombed up and refueled. The RLC and it's predecessor the RCT managed that very thing supplying AVTUR and munitions all over theaters of operation.
 

Riain

Banned
Exactly, and even more they don't have to be rearmed at the forward base, the operation of the forward base in the Falklands is illustrative. The planes were loaded on the carriers, the GR3 then flew to Sid Strip to await the call to action, with a bit of a fuel top-up, then either fly back to the carriers or return to Sids strip fo a fuel top-up and then fly back to the carrier. The SHars would fly out, do their CAP and land, refuel and do another CAP and return to the carrier, the short leg to and from Sids strip was added to their CAP time, vastly adding to SHar CAP coverage. What's more, before Sids Strip was laid a pair of Shars short on fuel after combat landed on Fearless and Intrepid for a top-up to get back to the carriers.

In contrast the Argies held a 4100ft runway with a 500ft PSP extension and they couldn't use it as a forward strip, perhaps planes landing there after doing their missions for a top-up to fly home. Such tactics would solve the vast majority of fuel problems faced by the Argies during this conflict.
 

Jason

Looking at the criticisms here I am reminded of the press conference during the Falklands Conflict when a senior BAE bod was asked why the Harrier was performing so much better than experts had said it would and he came out with the old one about the definition of an expert...

...'x' has-been
...'spurt' drip under pressure

But then, I'm bias, my dad worked on the Harrier design team and my earliest aircraft memories are of Harriers at Dunsfold...infact the earliest is of coming out of the bar on site one night with my parents and looking up to see a harrier just hovering there:cool:
 

The Dean

I can remember being dug in during a NATO exercise in Zealand. My trucks were cammed up along one side of a hedgerow and a flight of Harriers were operating from the other side flying sorties round the clock. One of my drivers said "Did you hear those f*****g planes all night?" another replied quite genuinely "what planes?".
 

Barry Bull

Donor
Jason said:
Looking at the criticisms here I am reminded of the press conference during the Falklands Conflict when a senior BAE bod was asked why the Harrier was performing so much better than experts had said it would and he came out with the old one about the definition of an expert...

...'x' has-been
...'spurt' drip under pressure

But then, I'm bias, my dad worked on the Harrier design team and my earliest aircraft memories are of Harriers at Dunsfold...infact the earliest is of coming out of the bar on site one night with my parents and looking up to see a harrier just hovering there:cool:
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The Harrier is indeed not a good fighter in the sense that it is not good for BVR air combat, even though the British Sea Harrier FRS.2 is equipped with Blue Vixen rader and sky flesh BVR missiles. However, it is a good ground support aircraft. The air victory in Falkland depends much more then the RN's integrated air defence capacity, utlizing the FAA, AAW surface ships and EW, instead of solely relying on Harrier's capability as a fighter.
 

Jason

Barry Bull said:
The Harrier is indeed not a good fighter in the sense that it is not good for BVR air combat, even though the British Sea Harrier FRS.2 is equipped with Blue Vixen rader and sky flesh BVR missiles. However, it is a good ground support aircraft. The air victory in Falkland depends much more then the RN's integrated air defence capacity, utlizing the FAA, AAW surface ships and EW, instead of solely relying on Harrier's capability as a fighter.
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Of course, no fighter wins a war alone; however the point is that the 'experts' in this case (who I believe it is generally accepted none of whom had actually ever flown a harrier) all said it couldn't do the job and within the system it worked, it did. Interestingly I can also remember ex-harrier pilots being interviewed said 'the harrier will do its job' and lets be honest it did.

You have to remember I am old enough to remember the conflict clearly, I can remember experts being wheeled out on TV, radio and in the press saying the harriers would all be shot down etc-and they were wrong.

In Bosnia, as far as I am concerned, the harrier saved my life so I am going to be pro it:)
 
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