It is not often I find myself agreeing with anything the Sun publishes but, I have come across an article that will probably touch the cockles of Mr Morris’ heart as well. Stuck waiting I found a copy dated 18th April and hidden away between the boobs and celebrity gossip was a piece of news stating that it is costing £30 million a week to bomb Libya while we have large numbers of Harries awaiting scrapping that could be up and on active service again for a one of cost of £40 million. I have no doubt some R sole in the government would point out that this is not the whole truth as it would mean employing pilots to fly them as well as maintenance crews and heaven forbid we might need an aircraft carrier or two.
I still believe the Harrier has a future and for once I must agree with the bulk of the Sun’s argument in its newsworthy article.
There must be a new defence review as the existing one didn’t even imagine that the Middle East would be up in arms. Syria next and no backing down on Libya. The Typhoon is the wrong plane for this – the Harrier is a much better place and could be deployed off carriers to better effect.
Imagine though if they had scrapped the Tornado as well!
It is a crying shame to scrap all those Harriers when clearly it is less economical to mess about with the new Typhoons. It would never have happened in Maggies day 🙂
Au Contraire! Maggie wanted to scrap the Fearless and Intrepid before the Falklands!
That may be so but, I’m sure she would have had plans for a new super aircraft carrier to replace them 🙂 Besides which she never did and without her we would now have some place called the Malvinas on the world map.
So is that why HMS Ark Royal was scrapped? If they had kept two decent aircraft carriers, the Falklands wouldn’t have been an issue.
Back to the Harrier, that was the reason we did not need huge floating airports like the Yanks use and Falklands will always be an issue to Argies, it is their Sudetenland.
A question of air power I suspect. The Phantom was a much heavier aeroplane and carried a bigger payload at mach 2. The Harrier was really a little ground attack plane that we adapted quite well for a role it was never really intended for. It might have been mincemeat against an F-15 but then that’s not taking into account Sharkey Ward and his mates.
To each aircraft its own role I suppose, but the Harrier was a pretty good all rounder and it wasn’t all about Phantoms either as your book Phoenix Squandron shows quite plainly the Buccaneer was another fine British aircraft. We need somebody with balls to take over defence and politicians that will not have us scurrying around the world on the Yanks tails.