Sea Harrier production – UK

Demobbed Aircraft

Like I said, see the PPRuNe Sea Jet thread (link in an earlier post).

Could they be regenerated? Possibly, in a real crisis all sorts of things become possible, which is why keeping aircraft intact and moving them about (which does a lot to keep them from rotting/corroding and decaying) is good. I am of course refering to the RNSFDO jets at Culdrose, eight Sea Harrier FA2 and two Harrier T8. However, finding pilots and geeting them up to speed on air defence, using the radar etc would be a greater challenge than the aircraft themselves. An even bigger issue would be getting ample intelligence warnings and having the political will to act on it.

I guess the issue of bringing pilots up to speed kind of depends on when an emmergency arose. There must be several RN Harrier pilots still flying who flew the SHAR. But in 2 or 4 years?

How lomng would it take to bring a GR7/9 pilot up to speed with a SAHR? In the time it takes to sail from P0mpy to the south Atlantic?

A country like UK must be able to operate alone worldwide. In a Falkland 2 scenario (cause this is what we are talking about) you have not time to train pilots for AV-8 and US pilots will never fight against argentina for the falklands.
That’s what i found about the FA2 survivors:
– 9 in Culdrose ( XZ440, ZD611, ZE690, ZE69x, ZH796, ZH803, ZH813, ZH812, ZH809 )
– 4 in Shawbury ( ZH811, ZH798, ZH804, ZD579)

There are 5 SHARs stores at Shawbury, in addition to those listed above there is ZH812. ZD579 looks like it has had the guts ripped out of it but the other four at least look intact.

In an ideal world the RN would still be flying SHARs.

In the unideal world the UK military were forced to make cuts. In that there is some sense in retiring the SHARs while keeping RN carriers in operation by flying GR9s. It keeps the RN skills on line untill the monsters arrive. Perhaps that was the best of a bad deal.

You’re still being bribed with the all work, they’re just trying to not make it to obvious 😡

What are you trying to say? The British bribe someone? How totally inappropiate, don’t you know we do not do that sort of thing old boy?:p