Harrier GR7/9 as a fighter

A radarless, subsonic Harrier GR7/9 is hardly an ideal fighter in today’s world but it would surely better than nothing.

Below is a Navy News story about the RAF IV Squadron Harriers’ “air combat exercises, making use of Illustrious’ Freddies, fighter controllers.”

Do the RAF/RN Harrier GR7/9s perform a fighter/intercepter role regularly? Or was it just an ‘once in a decade’ sort of exercise?

http://www.navynews.co.uk/view-story.aspx?articleID=483

A little Lusty IV play
29 July 2009

BARELY had the roar of Pegasus engines faded over the flight deck of HMS Illustrious than the carrier was reverberating again… to the sound of Pegasus engines.

As the Naval Strike Wing left Britain’s strike carrier behind, so the RAF’s IV Squadron arrived, joining Lusty in Oslo on her short Baltic summer deployment.

Commitments in Afghanistan have rather starved RN and RAF jump jets of carrier experience – something which should now change with the Harrier supplanted by the Tornado at Kandahar.

Indeed, it’s been three years since the Cottesmore-based Crabs last joined a carrier – although you should be seeing quite a bit more of IV Squadron at sea in the coming 12 months.

The RAF formation is due to join HMS Ark Royal next summer for Exercise Auriga, a major deployment to the USA.

To do so, IV Squadron need to go through 12 months of ‘carrier regeneration’, honing skills which, CO Wg Cdr Harvey Smyth says, “had waned during recent years”.

He took 16 of his pilots, plus ground crew, to the Norwegian capital, the latest port of call for Lusty, which had been working with Allied naval and air forces in the Baltic earlier in the summer.

Over a three-week period in the North Sea, the RAF fliers notched up 105 sorties and qualified 16 pilots to ‘day combat ready’ status.

They also joined in a number of air combat exercises, making use of Illustrious’ Freddies, fighter controllers, and Typhoons based at RAF Coningsby. That helped to qualify five pilots as air combat leaders.

All that means that IV will be able to conduct combat operations from a carrier if Illustrious or Ark Royal (currently undergoing a mini overhaul in Portsmouth) are called upon at short notice.

“Embarked operations are demanding in the extreme, but they are also immensely rewarding,” said Wg Cdr Smyth.

“I have been nothing short of amazed at how quickly my engineers, ops team and pilots have got up to speed on the ship – thanks to hard work on their behalf and also the excellent attitude of the ship’s company.”

Sunho