Comments by "Orbital_Inclination" (@Orbital_Inclination) on "Iconic Harriers still proving their worth as they fly from US warship" video.

  1. It can be both. A spitfire is iconic, but I wouldn't choose it for a modern air force
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  2. The F-35 that's more capable than a Harrier in nearly every measurable way
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  3. F-35 and F-22 have both been involved in conflict.
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  4. This is categorically false.
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  5. It was the US who backed out of the joint UK-US advanced Harrier programme
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  6. Israel operate a modified version of the F-35A, which has a far greater production line output than the B or C variants due to the massively larger demand. We sold our Harriers to the US as spare parts for their Harrier IIs. The F-35B is a vastly superior aircraft in terms of technology and capability
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  7. The F-35B is significantly faster than the Harrier, and far more capable in nearly every single quantifiable metric.
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  8. The UK earns money from every single F-35 sold, as BAE, RR and others produce a significant share of the components, depending on the variant
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  9. The government thinks about money because bankrupting a nation is an awful way of running an economy. Liz Truss was a good reminder of that.
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  10. Retrofitting existing airframes only goes so far. Even Harrier II has now almost run out of time and is being universally replaced by the far more capable F-35B
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  11. They don't. The USMC is replacing all Harriers with F-35B
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  12. Worth pointing out that a significant percentage of the components on every F-35 was designed or manufactured by a UK company. Then there's the Typhoon programme. To say British aircraft engineering is dead is to deny reality.
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  13. That's the reality of having finite defence spending. The MOD had to decide between Tornado and Harrier
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  14. We did, for decades.
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  15. Harrier II was a joint UK-US project. The advanced harrier programme was cancelled, but both nations carried on developing a second generation separately.
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  16. These are AV-8Bs, made by the US
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  17. Retrofitting new tech to an old design only gets you so far
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  18. They're still Harriers, just modernised under the Harrier II programme
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  19. The majority of our aircraft fleets are fairly new, and still very much up there in terms of capability. The oldest aircraft we operate are the RC-135s, but they get a complete overhaul every few years to remain on the cutting edge
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  20. Harrier II was a joint UK-US project
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  21. The USMC are replacing their Harriers with F-35B. An upgraded harrier would never have come close to an F-35 in terms of capability
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  22. The RAF had to choose between Harrier and Tornado to free up money for other projects, and Tornado was the more useful aircraft for the conflicts we faced at the time
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  23. TSR2 suffered from requirement creep and ended up being a money-sucking nightmare of a programme.
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