Shinichirou commented at 2012-10-23 00:00:18 » #1187065

this is awesome

also, I fixed the questionable rating

2 Points Flag

Anonymous commented at 2013-06-21 01:05:15 » #1345230

And to think so much was wasted on procuring the F-35 instead of something more practical like this. :P

6 Points Flag

Anonymous commented at 2016-02-10 20:59:44 » #1897872

The Harrier really wasn't all that. Its fuel capacity and range are shiet, the lack of radar in early models limited the type of armament that could be carried, carrying any decent amount of ordinance makes vertical takeoff borderline impossible, and it's slow and has a huge radar cross-section. Oh, and it's quite difficult to fly, the pilot workload is very high. The design couldn't be pushed much further than the improvements McDonnell Douglas made to the British original. It's a product of its time and it was an engineering wonder, but the only reason it even existed is because the British didn't want to build carriers as big as the U.S. does.

0 Points Flag

Anonymous commented at 2019-05-23 14:57:58 » #2382750

Anon2 - First flown in 1960...still flying today....
If it was that bad, it would have been canned before it was 10 tens old. The Brits weren't the only ones that bought it...ask the US Marines...and Thailand, and Spain, and India...

The F-35B is a disaster waiting to happen because it used a VTOL concept that was tried by numerous parties decades ago. Even back then, they found while they worked, they was impractical...useless if hit, a waste of usable space, dead weight, a maintenance headache, and let's not forget about the nightmare of trying to balance the thrust in vertical.

A design like the P.1216 would have been a better choice for upping performance...and it wouldn't be hard to mod the layout to be stealthy.
Bottom line is that the Harrier got produced because the design *worked*.

2 Points Flag