I don’t remember having seen a GR.1 or AV-8A loaded with three 1,000 pounders. Ever. Even if such loadout existed, it was most likely quite impractical. The bulk of Harrier I pics show the aircraft with the typical loadout of two bags, two rocket pods and ADEN cannons beneath the fuselage. Which is not necessarily THAT much more advanced than what Yak-38s did.

It existed, but images are difficult to come by. When GR1s and GR3s later on were stationed in Germany their requirement was to operate with up to three 1,000lb Dumb Bombs. Or a configuration of two 1,000lb Dumb Bombs and a Recce pod stationed between the two cannons – with two external drop tanks too of course. There was nothing impractical about it at that time.

@Y-20 Bacon,

yes you are right, Yakovlev had/has better experience than Hawker Siddley/Bae in making stvol combat aircraft. what limited the forger in seeing great growth like harrier was the demise of the USSR.

That is a very, very bold claim and one I don’t buy into. Past, and current experience pretty much proves Yakovlev don’t have as much experience.

Also, there’s no point blaming the demise of the USSR for the fate of the Yak-38. The UK were also going through major defence cuts when the Harrier was in development.

Let us be objective here, the early Harriers were hardly much better than that.. If it wasn’t for the MDD developing the Harrier II, the all-British Harriers were hardly something to write home about when it comes to combat payload and/or range.

The Harrier was designed to be deployed close to the battlefield in ruined areas, take-off, get to the target, get back, re-arm, re-fuel, repeat again & again as quick as possible… so range wasn’t really an issue in this scenario. Regardless, each aircraft were capable of operating with up to three 1,000 ‘Dumb Bombs’.

It never ceases to amaze me how, in almost any thread concerning the UK or France, it invariably turns into a nationalistic pi$$ing match, congratulations…

Nothing to do with me. Nic’s obviously hurt about something.

6BFM – 4 draw – 1 F-22victory = 1Rafale victory :highly_amused:

The French should have done what the Luftwaffe Jocks did. Stenciled some (or one) F-22 markings on the side of their aircraft. 😀

It was actually done for cosmetic reasons because the aircraft had hundreds of pressure sensors dotting it making it look god-awful. It certainly wasn’t done for secrecy reasons!

Well, it wasn’t. Craig Penrise stated in a very old article that it was done to hide most of the sensors and that it wasn’t done for cosmetic reasons. How the aircraft’s looks wasn’t important, it was just a matter of Gloss/Satin Black was the best colour to help hide certain things.

The Black ZH588 is in a museum without the sensors.

He could hve flown a VW beetle that the result won’t hve been different.

Did you see the episode of Top Gear when a VW Beetle was dropped from a Helicopter a mile up from the ground? It flew… Like a brick! :dev2:

Thanks for that EELightning.

No worries.

MIG-31 is in far better shape structurally than F-16s. MIG-31 does not have to carry external loads to same extent as F-16. MIG-31 is not subjected to higher G forces (Just like bomber has long life span hrs), and crews are only trained for air to air interception and using its long range sensors to identifiy the smallest of cruise missiles. large engine power and radar ensures that it is unjammable. so the training of MIG-31 is more relevant to no fly zone which is to deny effective airspace use.

What is the average Mach the Mig-31 operates at during training sorties?