From: griffith@acuson.com (Paul Griffiths)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Tornado F3 replacement
Date: 27 Jan 93 16:00:39 GMT
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California


From Paul Griffiths <griffith@acuson.com>

raymond@jupiter.ame.arizona.edu (Raymond Man) writes:
>_________________________________________________________________
>About the Harrier, let me first make it clear I AM a Harrier lover
>and I admire Sir Camm & Sir Fozard. But let's be a little more
>objective. If a pilot wins over F-14/F-15 in a Harrier, it just
>because he is a good pilot and his opponents less so. If you
>allow me first ignore VIFFing* for the Harrier, you can see that,
>although it is a nice little aeroplane to fly, with its small
>wings, single engine and dragy intakes cannot not be in the same
>league with the modern fighters (F-14/15/16/17/18 and F-20 too).
>In terms of armourment, neither its ADEN nor Sidewinders can be
>on pars with the Vulcan and Sparrow. However a good pilot compensate
>his short in range by surprising his foes and jumping on them from
>nowhere. The very large F-14/F-15 tend to give themselves away
>visually while the small Harrier is hard to spot. But then these
>can be taken advantage of only by good pilots. Given average pilots,
>the performance of the F-14/F-15 will give an edge.

I agree with you here, in the fact that the biggest drawback of
the harrier is that although they are versatile and capable,they
need the best pilots to fly them.  That's why the cream of the
RAF pilot capability gets channelled into the Harrier world.
Perhaps a VSTOL that can be flown by the 'average' pilot rather
than just the best pilots is called for.  I still have a problem 
with the theory that Speed and G makes for a better fighter.
With the advent of the AMRAAM being slotted
onto the Harrier, some of the missle advantage can be taken away.

>Now VIFFing, I am not sure how many can master this black art and
>almost by definition those who can are good pilots. The increase
>of performance by VIFFing is actually slight: at most it adds an
>extra g to the turning, which at high energy is 6-7 g already.
>The difference between the wing loading of the F-15 vs the Harrier
>ensured a margin way larger than that already. So the actual
>benifit might come from the fact that for an opponent who is not
>familiar with VIFFing, the lack of visual clue to him when the
>Harrier starts the maneuver might throw him off. But then it just
>come back to the point of a good pilot vs an average, not very
>experienced pilot.
 
Aside from VIFFing, which does produce some pretty unpredictable
manoeuvre for both the enemy and pilot. ;) An important aspect
of the Harriers flight characteristics are it's slow flight
capabilities. Granted high instantaneous and sustained G available
is a marked advantage in combat against any fighter with a
lower G capability. However there is another characteristic that is
alien to to most fighter aircraft designers and that is 
'pointing the aircraft'.  Again High speed and G's are desirable,
but neither are as important as being able to point at the 
opposition quickly. With High speed and G's comes a wider
turning radius. ACM is usually the attempt to get into a
position to fire your weapons, the 6 o'clock position being
the more desirable.   In fairly evenly matched combat, it is
more often than not the case that a high-speed flight will
degenerate into some form of 'scissors' manoeuvre. Here the
aim of the game is to retard forward progress relative to 
the opposition. At this point, whichever aircraft can point
or turn better in the slow-speed environment will win the
fight. It is in this environment that the Harrier has waxed
the 'acknowledged speed/G fighters'.  

-Paul Griffiths
-Acuson Computed Sonography
Newsgroups: sci.military