The Sea Harrier was retired to save money. End of story. Although even if no losses occur, the problems caused by losing pilots, and losing the skills of flight deck crews (and others) mean that is an expensive way to save money.

We’d be screwed! The options would be limited.

1. Hope the threat can be dealt with by ship based defences, despite cuts to ship numbers and cuts the spares and spending on upkeep.
2. Harrier GR9 with Sidewinder, directed by ships or by Sea King ASACS. I don’t know what came of the proposals to fit ASRAAM and Link 16, which would have made up for some of the capability lost with the Sea Harrier.
3. Apache helicopters in an emergency air to air role.
4. A number of Sea Harriers, and T8 trainers were kept at the Dummy Deck at Culdrose for training aircraft handlers. In theory these could be regenerated, although finding pilots and engineers would be harder than putting the aircraft back in the air/on deck. Less probable things were done in 1982, and in a crisis all sorts of things become possible.

All these things, particularly 1 and 2, and latterly option 4 in more recent pages (since January 2006), are discussed at GREAT length on the PPRuNe Sea Jet thread.

Basically it all comes down to getting sufficent warning from the intelligence community, having the political will to counter a threat, and the Services’ ability to adapt, improvise and overcome. I haven’t mentioned things such as using Tomahawk to take out enemy facilities or using special forces to destroy aircraft.

Is it likely, who knows? They probably though that pre 1982….

So if you had the resources to fit the sensors from Canberra PR9 to another aircraft, what would it be? What is the reason for your choice?

The SRVL (Short Rolling Vertical Landing) tests are continuing.

See here.

An SRVL involves a short take-off and vertical landing aircraft performing a “running landing” on to the carrier flightdeck, using air speed to provide wingborne lift to complement engine thrust. The touchdown position on an axial flightdeck is similar to that of a conventional carrier – about 45m (150ft) from the stern, but no arrestor gear is required, as the aircraft uses its brakes to come to a stop within a distance of 90-150m. The technique could allow an F-35B to recover with an extra 907kg (2,000lb) of weapons and fuel, or reduce propulsion system stress and increase engine life.

The Dstl began work to examine the feasibility of employing the SRVL manoeuvre in the late 1990s. Following a series of simulation-based studies, the MoD’s investment approvals board in July 2006 endorsed the requirement as part of its F-35B-based Joint Combat Aircraft programme.

Speaking at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s International Powered Lift conference in London in July, Rosa said SRVL studies have shown that “a way forward exists to achieving operationally useful increases in bring-back, compared to a vertical landing, on board CVF with an appropriate level of safety”. But “uncertainties remain in terms of the scope of an operational clearance and the potential impact on the sortie generation rate for CVF”.

Qinetiq used its VAAC Harrier testbed to perform representative land-based flight trials and a ship-based SRVL demonstration aboard the French navy’s aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle last year.

Rosa said past work has also identified a promising visual landing aids (VLA) concept optimised for SRVL and stabilised against deck motion. “We will continue to mature the SRVL-optimised VLA arrangements, look at the possible ‘tuning’ of the JSF flight-control laws, and further study the effect of SRVL on the CVF sortie generation rate,” he said. The capability’s full scope will be confirmed after flight trials from the 65,000t vessels, which are due to enter service in 2014 and 2016, respectively.

Other forthcoming work includes optimisation of the approach profile, agreement on the optimal post-touchdown technique, and mitigation for failure cases, such as a burst tyre on touchdown.

At least with real progress being made with CVF (at least) we can see the end of the capability gap caused by the PREMATURE retirement of the Sea Harrier (as discussed at great length here on PPRuNe or if that doesn’t work (IP issues, temporary security problems etc) try the archive version.

CVF will use optical systems to aid landing pilots, how these will differ from current systems remains to be seen. Some of you might be interested to learn that similar sytems exist for helicopter operations – see this from AGI Ltd.

What would be the point? Harrier (all forms) will be replaced by F35B, trying to upgrade the Harrier as much as you suggest would involve a total redesign.