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.
