its a really good question, although the harrier concept still cannot be questioned, it has never served in any situation close to the original brief,
i don’t know if anyone can tell me how early on the sea harrier was thought of. No doubt the falklands was its greatest moment, but as has been discussed before, it is probable a convential carrier force iwth the phantoms and bucc’s aswell as gannets would have probably done a better job.
I have never heard of any hoped sales to china.
That about sums it up.
Nothing came remotely close to the Harrier as an assets dispersal concept during the Cold War. The only thing which I can think of as rivalling it was the Swedish ‘hardened motorway’ notion:
http://www.canit.se/~griffon/aviation/text/bas/dispersed_basing.html
This attacked the problem from an entirely different angle.
We have the fact that the Cold War never got hot to thank for not being able to gauge the ‘success’ of the Harrier, although its adaptability to matters such as the Falklands and the fact that it’s been sold widely and is still in widespread use today tend to be fairly conclusive.
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