Sea Harrier "La Muerte Negra" with the Falkland's coming make the Sea Harrier what it was, The Black Death

Very few fighters get named by their adversaries, even fewer get a name as cool and chilling as the literal Black Death. Famously, in 1982 on the very map being introduced into the game the Sea Harrier proved to the world, that they where indeed combat aircraft and not just an airshow pony.

The Shar, for its time, was an advanced fleet defense fighter. Although subsonic, the installed thrust at lower altitudes was gargantuan, often many described the aircraft as brutally over powered or rhino like. The small wing area may catch ones eye as a potential downside, but once the weight is taken into account as well as the very high TWR and with the planes good high AOA handling it was quickly discovered that the Harrier, even with its smaller wing, could prove a very difficult opponent in air combat.

“She can only be described as a strange misshapen beast with a rhino like energy beneath its stubbornly subsonic dad-bod,” - Commodore Jaideep Avinash Maolankar

Now you might read this and say wait a second I just got through completely murdering Harriers in my (F-5, MiG-21, MiG-23… insert basically any plane) and that would be true the Harriers, particularly the Sea Harrier the only purpose built air to air variant of the type is laughably bad at doing anything in the air to air world. This has been the case for years, ever since gaijin released the type in 2022 with the Update Apex Predators. Many of you may have seen my other posts but in this post I want to thoroughly explain everything I have learned about the Harriers air combat potential. Using all of the newest and most accurate sources I have, I will showcase exactly everything Gaijin got wrong about Britain’s last purebred fighter.

1: The Thrust problem
For the longest time the Harrier was anemic. Completely lost all speed with the slightest change in direction. A huge part of this was due to the fact that Gaijin had modeled the thrust to drop off as speed increased, causing around a 50% loss in thrust by the time you had accelerated to .7 Mach. This was partially remedied last major, but still needs further buffing. IRL the Harriers from a 10,000 foot diver where said to have been at speeds well in excess of 700 knots while chasing A-4s. This was stated by David Morgan a Sea Harrier pilot who scored 4 air to air kills in the Falklands. This is a great representation of how easily the Harriers could break the sound barrier and shows why they were classified as transonic and not subsonic.

2: The Turning abilities (Or lack there of)
The Harriers wing is small and may not be able to produce as much G as other planes at the same speed but it was fairly efficient and handled high AOA well. This allowed the Harrier to sustain fairly respectable turn rates throughout the flight speed regime where the peak was 14 degrees per second at a combat weight of 17,200 lbs.
The limited use of VIFF could greatly increase the Harriers turning abilities in a variety of ways. the STR of the Harrier could be augmented with 15-20 degrees nozzles at lowering airspeeds the use of the nozzles allowed the Harrier to sustain better turn rates than what the wing was able to even generate in lift. Greater nozzle angles could allow for much higher instant G moves.
The quoted figure for VIFF in instantaneous turn rate is 19 degrees per second at .6 Mach this is far greater lift than the wing would be able to achieve and is many times greater than can be achieved in game.

3: Smokeless, small size
The Harrier had a smokeless engine, combined with the jets very small size made it incredibly difficult to detect visually.

4: Nose around, enemy down
The Harrier actually grabbed the soviets attention and could be an inspiration for the extreme nose pointing ability seen on the Flanker series of jets. The Harrier was able to spin the nose around to incredibly high degrees of alpha and with a little bit of VIFF the jet air going under the wing would pull air from before the wing downwards and across the wing, creating a BLC boundary layer control effect. This means the Harrier could pull more AOA and do it with very low induced drag penalties as the flow never fully separated in the first place. It is said that the Harrier can fly tighter circles than any jet that had flown to date.

5: A VIFF a day keeps the IR seeker away
The Harrier was able to defuse its heat signature by nozzling the thrust into the freestream air, this would completely mitigate its IR signature and give it the ability to just deny IR shots. She was also a very cold jet and it was very easy to defeat heat seeking missiles. Much to the contrary in game however where she appears to have 2-4 engines modeled.

Why so bad in game?

As easy as it would be to throw fingers at Gaijin and just say they refuse to fix it, I think its more appropriate to comment that at the time there wasn’t much information to go on. All the real data was hidden away, it took me months of research to even find the Harriers E-M diagram and months more to find good sources as to how she flies in the VIFF regime.

The Harriers still need massive buffs to the turn rates and especially the ability to pull AOA.
The Sea Harriers in particular need to have their avionics updated in the game to give them the gunsights and EEGS they have been missing since 2022.

I really hope that Gaijin will take some time and effort to fix the Sea Harrier and all the other Harriers due to the addition of the Falklands map. As if they don’t the legendary title of La Muerte Negra is absolutely meaningless if even a little A-4 can come along in game and defeat this mighty killer.

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Some rare photos I found recently


Bombing of Stanley

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Would love to see a harrier buff, although if you want gaijin to do it then you may want to share your sources with them.

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I have, many bug reports are already in. They all have the associated documentation linked.

Hopefully they change things this update.

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Amazing video of the HUD and an airshow

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A premium shar called “black death” would be based but gaijin is calling the falklands “las malvinas” (lame asf) for the Spanish so we arent gonna see anything cool to show our triumph in defending an island from invasion

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harrier was strike jet from the start lol. if anything its the typhoon that was UK last air superiority fighter

How this feature works? Is there any special on its engine design? I’ve never heard this tech and it sounds interesting.

There are 2 major parts to the trick.

The first is fairly simple. By angling the nozzles to 30° which in turn also raises the nose of the aircraft, what was a rear-aspect shot now becomes more like a side aspect shot (which is more than a few rear-aspect IR missiles can usually handle) and instead of a clear line of sight to the nozzle, the wing is now also placed between the exhaust and the seeker.

This distrupts the ability of most rear-aspect IR seekers from getting a lock entirely and makes defending against all-aspects much easier.

The second part is more complicated and I dont fully understand all the details. but in essence the forward 2 nozzles on the harrier output cold exhaust and between this and the turbluance created by the wing, the exhaust from the rear 2 nozzles is disapated far more than they would be from any other aircraft, which further reduces the IR signature of the Harrier,

You can read this being used to great affect against USAF F-5E Aggressors with the Sea Harrier FRS1

Screenshot 2025-06-05 014942
Sea Harrier Over the Falklands by Sharkey Ward

Which resulted in a win ratio of 7:1 in 1v1 combat

Screenshot 2025-06-05 015225
Harrier: How to be a fighter Pilot by Paul Tremelling

and was taught to Sea Harrier FA2 pilots to help defend against IR threats

There is limited evidence that this affect was good enough to save some Harrier Gr3s from a blue on blue from an Aim-9L from above (but key factors such as range are unknown and maybe the 9L was also right at the outer limits of its lock range, by the fact VID was a bit of an issue, I think this is a potentially fair assessment)

Screenshot 2025-06-05 015444
Sea Harrier Over the Falklands by Sharkey Ward

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So in fact it’s further more complicated to calculate how hot a engine is… Gaijin just take it easy and replace it with thrust. The Harrier has powerful engine so it suffers a big loss…

I notice some rear-aspect IR msls can even lock on harriers from its side, from the oldest varients to the latest ones. Sad game facts…

Yes, and just to further complicate matter. The Harrier’s engine produces more thrust at lower air speeds. Meaning when in a dogfight or perhaps when you jink to defend against a missile, you are in fact increasing the temp of your harrier.

Me and Matrix were testing this. When near enough max speed in the Shar. 2x Flares was enough to decoy a R-60M fired from 3km in rear-aspect with no turning required. If fired at a SHar doing 420kts (which isnt an unreasonable speed to find yourself at quite often) 8x flares was not enough to defeat an R-60M fired in rear-aspect from 3km. It took throttling down and turning to actually defeat the missile.

Yeah, and its one thing when you are in something like the GR3 or FRS1e and are facing relatively trivial missiles to defaet. But its another in the FA2 or AV-8B+ against pretty much pure IRCCM missiles and with even more powerful engines. Especially with the BOL issues as well for the FA2. Its a rough time for the Harriers.

There is a slim hope though for a short term solution without them having to model anything. The F-117’s (and I also assume the Commanche) IR reduction, stealth stuff, is just a multiplier of I think 0.5x applied to the thrust-temp which greatly reduces the IR signature (though ironically, the F-117 is still hotter than an F-5 on reheat). This code could very easily be transplanted over to other notable aircraft such as the Harriers and F-14s and give them some short term relief. Just a bit of normalisation with the IR signatures (like roughly matching the IR signature with that of a Hunter or Buc for example) would do absolute wonders for us.

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The Sea Harrier was considered a major change aircraft from the Gr.3 and had many of its components redesigned from the ground up.

Just like the strike eagle, but that is not a purebred strike jet is it?

What are you talking about, and the Typhoon is not 100% a British aircraft, the Sea Harrier was the last all British combat aircraft that filled the role of fighter. It filled this role well.

Alright?

Just because it was a VTOL bomb truck with a radar and sidewinders (later amraam) strapped to it, does not make it a purebred fighter

It also had an all new cockpit, with a raised position for better visibility and I think some wing tweaks. it was also extesnively modified for naval operations

The Harrier Gr1/Gr3 was design for mud moving

The Sea Harrier was design for Air-to-Air combat.

Yes, based upon the same airframe at its core and yes the Gr1/Gr3 came first, but that doesnt necessarily mean the Sea Harrier isn’t a fighter.

Where an Aircraft like the F3 was rather handicapped in its interceptor role by being based upon an aircraft designed for low level flight, the harriers had no such weakness.

It also had some of the best control in a dogfight in the world for a long time. Still having few aircraft designed for dogfighting capable of relibily defeating it

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The FA.2 even went against Rafales in close combat and it was apparently a very “fruity” fight as Paul Trembling stated.

The fact that the Shars where engaged in prolong fighting with a plane as insane as the Rafale instead of straight up being curb stomped I think says enough.

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Yes, they look the same yet like 70% of all parts where redesigned, and from the intakes forward it was a completely different aircraft with different (better) flying qualities.

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