Thanks for that – having had my head stuck in the sand for the past however many years I never realised that the Gr9 didnt have a radar ,…………….. sorry for being sarky but really.
The reason they should still look at the GR9 is that they need airframes. Tell me over the past 10 years when a Indian Harrier has actually been in action???? or likely to be before the Mig 29s are fully operational.
Now tell me if you think retiring the Harriers in UK is a good idea, no its not you lose skills. So how about India buys 15-20 GR9’s forgets about the fact that they dont have radar and uses them to fill the deck. You take 4/6 Indian Harriers out and the same GR9’s leaving the rest on rotation. You keep your pilots qualified and working off decks as well as the crew. AND you get to use a plane that’s ground attack from a carrier….something the Mig 29 can also do, so you develop you doctrine for that?
Is that such a silly idea?
No its not a silly idea to have GR9s just for the attack role. Its just that the IN has mainly used the Sea Harriers till date in the fleet defence role. The IN pilots primarily train for that role. That is one of the reasons you don’t see the IN’s Sea Harrier carrying any sort of PGM whatsoever despite the LUSH upgrade because the main scope of that program was the addition of a BVR weapon and a modern radar.
Whether the IN’s Shars have seen action or not is not important and is in fact a very silly argument. How many times have Typhoons seen any action over the time it has been in service? Does that mean that the RAF can do away with what it considers the Typhoon’s basic capabilities for the roles it assigns to the fleet?
Nevertheless, the GR9 is a capable striker and it does bring some very interesting capabilities to the table. However, the only problem with acquiring Harriers now may be time it would take to buy these GR9s, then train some new Harrier crews to operate the GR9s (there are only a few of the Shar crews now, so it would require additional investment in Harrier trainers) would all take at the very least 3 years. There is no large pool of Harrier crews in India, unlike in Britain, so training new flight crew is going to take time. That will leave these with just about 5-7 years of actual useful operation on board carriers before INS Viraat retires, leaving them land bound.
So, the only realistic option may be to buy up the remaining SHar FA2s, upgrade them to LUSH standard to keep on standard for the fleet, and aim to keep at least 10 total radar equipped Harriers on rotation onboard the Viraat. The rest can be used as spares hulks if required.
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