Harrier and Sea Harrier

[GTX]

Or go the route of complete damnation & make it entirely conventional....

Yep - that's another thought - I figure you could perhaps use a non-after-burning or even after burning RR Spey out the back.  I would imagine you'd end up with something akin to a skyhawk.

Regards,

Greg

[Mossie]

I guess that'd not be far off.  The shape of the Harrer is pretty much tied up with the Pegasus, so if you removed it it's looks would change dramatically.  The large intakes & the bulbous fuselage are no longer required, you don't need a high wing & a conventional undercarriage is possible.  A British equivalant (although a few years later), might be a single seat version of the HS P.1173 like the one Duncan did on the front page.

[Weaver]

I've been thinking...... since the Sea Harrier is supposed to be meant for air defense roles, would a TV camera like the one used by the F-14 be useful for the FA.2?

Would it be economically feasible though?  Is the set an expensive piece of gear?

Yes it would be useful and it probably wouldn't be that expensive. In the early days of the Tornado F.3 there was talk of such a system being fitted, but it was quietly dropped, presumably on cost....

What's always struck me is the possibility of making a TCS pod that fits in a Sparrow bay, perhaps extending to scan and then retracting again. This means that a fighter in peacetime could carry the pod, at the cost of one BVR stowed kill which is unlikely to be needed, in order to obtain absolutely positive visual ID of an ambiguous and possibly innocent target, but in wartime, when "every blip from direction x" MUST be hostile, the pod can stay at home in favour of maximum kills.

[Weaver]

Re the conventional Harrier, I've just been reading John Farley's 2000 lecture on the aircraft's development, which makes it abundantly clear that aircraft's entire shape is non-ideal, but dictated by the V/STOL requirement.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.harrier.org.uk/history/images/Figs_18_Harrier_GR1_3-view.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.harrier.org.uk/history/history_farley.htm&usg=__U_HSLUm1k-VIVSLubnVAJ_EVFuQ=&h=216&w=300&sz=8&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=BjnF_33ju2kETM:&tbnh=84&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dharrier%2B3-view%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7FUJC_en-GB%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

If you made the Pegasus conventional and re-heated ALL the bypass air, the result would be awesome, I'd guess about 40,000lbs. It'd go like sugar-off-a-shovel, just not very far....

If you wanted to use the Harrier shape but with conventional engines, possibly the best solution would be to give it two small "mini-Spey" engines (early Adours? Fanned Vipers?) side-by-side in the original engine bay, the result being a bit like a high-winged Buccaneer. the non-afterburning flow effects on the rear fuselage wouldn't be any worse than the Buccaneer, and it would have the same advantage of leaving a big section of fuselage above (and below in this case) the engines for fuel. You'd almost certainly go for a tricycle undercarriage with the main units retracting into wing pods though.

[PR19_Kit]

All the talk of 'conventional' Harriers begs the question 'Why would you need one'? The RAF had the Jaguar on the stocks at the same time, and the Bucc was on the way, and for any heavy stuff they had the Phantoms.

Finding an Operational Requirement for a conventional Harrier pre-supposes one of those others didn't happen I guess?

[Weaver]

All the talk of 'conventional' Harriers begs the question 'Why would you need one'? The RAF had the Jaguar on the stocks at the same time, and the Bucc was on the way, and for any heavy stuff they had the Phantoms.

Finding an Operational Requirement for a conventional Harrier pre-supposes one of those others didn't happen I guess?

I was thinking that: could be a British-only non-supersonic Jaguar-ish requirement for CAS? Something akin to a British J-22 Orao?

[DarrenP]

Effectivley Jaguar became all British as dassualt pushed the Mirage F1.

I think the British should have abandoned the F/A2 sea harrier and bought more Harrier 2 airframes and fitted it out with the blue vixen radar and weapons systems.

[pyro-manic]

The problem with that is the big wing MDD designed for the Harrier 2 made it much slower than the SHar, which was already rather slow for a fleet defence fighter.

[kitnut617]

If you wanted to use the Harrier shape but with conventional engines, possibly the best solution would be to give it two small "mini-Spey" engines (early Adours? Fanned Vipers?) side-by-side in the original engine bay, the result being a bit like a high-winged Buccaneer. the non-afterburning flow effects on the rear fuselage wouldn't be any worse than the Buccaneer, and it would have the same advantage of leaving a big section of fuselage above (and below in this case) the engines for fuel. You'd almost certainly go for a tricycle undercarriage with the main units retracting into wing pods though.

This hits close to a project I've been mulling over.  I've read all about how the Harrier could never go supersonic with it's big intakes and fan front, so (not withstanding the P.1154 project) my thinking was to go for two smaller engines in a bigger airframe, say 12 to 15,000 lb thrust engines.  My thoughts were to have a scaled up Harrier frame, have the underside of the rear fuselage like a F-4 Phantom, with one vectoring cold nozzle at the front for each engine and the rear exhaust working like the F-35 exhaust does.  Main u/c in pods like the RN P.1154. To do the project I got hold of a 1/48 Harrier II kit and a 1/72 Harrier two seat forward fuselage plus some F-15 style intakes, but the project has stalled at the moment.  The reason is that mixing the 1/72 and 1/48 parts don't work, I really need a 1/60 Harrier to make it work right.

[Mossie]

All the talk of 'conventional' Harriers begs the question 'Why would you need one'? The RAF had the Jaguar on the stocks at the same time, and the Bucc was on the way, and for any heavy stuff they had the Phantoms.

Finding an Operational Requirement for a conventional Harrier pre-supposes one of those others didn't happen I guess?

Just wondering aloud, although the Jag wasn't touted until a few years after the P.1127 & Kestrel had flown.  Had the powers that be decided that a VSTOL aircraft wasn't worth the effort (Harriers gestation took a long time), maybe a conventional light strike aircraft would have been required sooner than Jaguar?  It was also originally a trainer, the major strike component didn't come until later.  Buccaneer was still pretty much despised by the RAF at this point & they still only took it because it was forced upon them.

[Weaver]

All the talk of 'conventional' Harriers begs the question 'Why would you need one'? The RAF had the Jaguar on the stocks at the same time, and the Bucc was on the way, and for any heavy stuff they had the Phantoms.

Finding an Operational Requirement for a conventional Harrier pre-supposes one of those others didn't happen I guess?

Just wondering aloud, although the Jag wasn't touted until a few years after the P.1127 & Kestrel had flown.  Had the powers that be decided that a VSTOL aircraft wasn't worth the effort (Harriers gestation took a long time), maybe a conventional light strike aircraft would have been required sooner than Jaguar?  It was also originally a trainer, the major strike component didn't come until later.  Buccaneer was still pretty much despised by the RAF at this point & they still only took it because it was forced upon them.

The Jag was originally seen as primarily a trainer by the RAF, so it wasn't in competition with the Harrier. Then NATO adopted Flexible Response, and it suddenly became clear that many more CAS/Light Strike aircraft would be needed to support a prolonged conventional scrap in Germany, and since the Jag was now looking uncomfortably expensive as a trainer, the natural solution was to swap the majority of the order over to the strike version which was already being developed for the French, but with the much better nav/attack system already developed for the Harrier.

Further Harrier orders beyond the initial buy would then have been competing for the same CAS/Light Strike pot of money as the Jags, and the since the Jag was an international program, any reduction in the buy would be politically difficult. Much the same political argument made the Germans buy the "International" Alpha Jet A instead of the Harrier (which they more than anyone else really, really should have bought....).

Had the P1127/Kestrel been dumped along with the P1154 (which could easily have happened) and the Jaguar program fallen apart like AFVG (which could easily have happened), then the RAF would have found itself looking for a cheap light strike aircraft which would roughly equate to a conventional Harrier. The late 1970s AST.396 requirement pretty much equated to such an aircraft anyway. There's still no reason to literally design such an aircraft as a "conventional Harrier" though: chances are it would have been more like the AMX, i.e. a single-engined subsonic Jaguar. That might also have lead to a trainer version which would have taken the place of the Hawk.

[kitnut617]

Which would have more than likely been the Small Agile Battlefield Aircraft   

[Weaver]

Soory, got that a little wrong - AST.396 was an early 1970s requirement specifically aimed at a Harrier/Jaguar replacement in the rough class of the AMX. Both CTOL, STOl and STOVL solutions were studied. AST.396 was withdrawn because of the "F-16 effect" which made it clear that a lightweight fighter could be deisgned with uncompromising air-to-air capability and stil fulfill the light strike role. AST.403 was issued in it's place, and that lead to the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Ironically, one strand of AST.396 was to study Jaguar updates and the conclusion was that the aircraft could be kept competative after 1984 (it's original out-of-service date  ) by giving it much more power, which could be easily achieved with uprated Adours. Only took them 20-odd years to get around to that one.....

SABA was a 1987 private venture, not to an AST, for a much smaller, slower aircraft, aimed as puch at anti-helicopter operations as CAS.

[PR19_Kit]

The reason is that mixing the 1/72 and 1/48 parts don't work, I really need a 1/60 Harrier to make it work right.

What a pity Lincoln aren't still in business, I bet they'd have made one........... 

[rickshaw]

Mmm, conventional, twin-engined Harrier.  Wouldn't it have looked rather like a high-winged Supermarine Scimitar?