Another update and yet no changes/improvements for any of the Sea Harrier’s in-game. There are a number of old issues for all 3 that have yet to be fixed and this is starting to be badly felt.
Harrier wide issues
These issues that dont just affect the Sea Harrier but issues that affect every single Harrier in-game from the Harrier Gr1 right the way up to the FA2 and AV-8B+
Sooty Exhaust.
The Harrier’s in game have a very sooty exhaust that can be seen from long distance with great ease, This is really badly felt in gamemodes such as the GRB or ASB where the ability to hide from the enemy visually is very valuable. This is incorrect and the pegasus engine was designed to produce no exhaust smoke. The only time that the exhaust produces any soot is when using water injection and when in the hover. At all other times it should produce no visible exhaust.
This has been reported 5 months ago
All Harriers - Incorrect engine Exhaust
Engine exhaust temp
Currently in game, the Harrier’s are some of the hardest aircraft to attempt to defeat an IR missile in. This is due to how the game handle IR signatures and flare resistance. The game looks at the aircraft thrust, which in the Harrier’s case, is very high and actually increases at lower air speeds. This thrust to flare ratio is what the game looks at for handling flare resistance on missiles.
When you attempt to defend against an IR missile in any Harrier, if you are at low speed or Jink to attempt to help shake the missile (and thus bleed a lot of speed), your flares are almost certainly going to have minimal affect and even early missile like R-60 and Aim-9E, will often ignore flares and impact you when fired from direct rear. Good luck vs anything with IRCCM.
IRL this is massively wrong, not only should the Harrier have an overall low IR signature due to the engine configuration but the Harrier should be able to greatly mitigate IR locks by making use of VIFF or Vector-in-forward-flight. By angling the nozzles you can turn a rear aspect shot. into a side aspect shot that greatly increases the chance of an IR missile being defeated. Additionally, by turning as well or raising the nose, the wing can be placed between the seeker and the exhaust which is enough to prevent a lock in most case and likely defeat missiles already in the air under the right condition. These tactics were often taught to Sea Harrier pilots during training.
This was also used to great affect by Sea Harrier FRS1 pilots during exercises vs US F-5Es and F-15As in which they won by a significant margin. This is outlined in the book “Sea Harrier over the falklands” by Commander Sharkey Ward.
Sea Harrier FRS1 vs F-5E
This is a passage about the F-5E being unable to acquire a rear-aspect IR lock onto a Sea Harrier.
There is even suggestive evidence this affect was enough to prevent an Aim-9L from locking onto a Harrier Gr3 from above
Harrier Gr3 vs Aim-9L
In this passage, the Sea Harrier FRS1s have mistaken the flgiht of Harrier Gr3s as Daggers and are moving to engage. Whilst it is never explicity stated, I am assuming they are armed with Aim-9Ls and when they attempt to acquire a lock, they are unable to do so with the Aim-9 which tips them off that maybe they aren’t daggers but rather Harrier GR3s.
Whilst I do not expect this to be fully modeled, as it would require a major overhaul to the IR modeling in game. There appears to be references to the F-117 getting a modified IR signature and I am hoping the Harriers could recieve a bit of the same. To bring their IR signatures down to be in-line with other aircraft.
Sea Harrier FRS1e and FRS1 Issues
HUD
Both FRS1s have placeholder HUDs from that of the Harrier GR3 and is missing all A2A symbology including radar lock and Aim-9 lock among other information. The Harrier GR3 HUD is highly specialised towards ground attack and lacks anything else.
The HUD should look like this. This image is curtosy of Flame. He has also fully reported the incorrect HUD over a year ago now:
Sea Harrier FRS.1 (e) & Sea Harrier FRS.1 completely wrong HUD
If the native HUD cannot be provided soon, maybe a placeholder HUD should be considered. Perhaps from the AV-8B+ or Tornado F3 to provide this missing functionality
Radar Gunsight
All Sea Harriers should also have a radar gunsight, this would be a major boost to their performance as the ADENs can be a notably difficult guns to use within a dogfight. The Sea Harrier FA2 recieved this during the dev server it was added, but this was never ported over to the FRS1e or FRS1. They are identical guns with nearly identical airframes. This should not be an issue (even made a bodge for the GR3 HUD to make use of the Canon CCIP). Also, the F-5E is a super-sonic aircraft with a radar gunsight slightly above the FRS1e and at the same BR as the FRS1, so should not be a balancing issue,
This issue was reported by Flame 9 months ago
Sea Harrier FRS.1 & FRS.1(e) - Missing radar gun sight
Incorrect Designation
Currently both Sea Harrier FRS1e and FRS1 are designated as “Strike Aircraft” in game and this is strictly speaking, incorrect. Their primary purprose IRL was to intercept soviet shadower aircraft that were surveiling the carrier group and in their most infamous deployment in the Falklands, were responsible for mostly CAP (Combat Air Patrol), whilst they did provide some ground attack, this was mostly handled by RAF Harrier Gr3s and the not the FRS1s.
In-game we do not see such mutlirole aircraft like the Phantom FGR2 recieve such a designation and this decision has an unfortunate impact for Britains GRB line-up. As it stands, you cannot realistically bring the Sea Harrier FRS1 as a CAP aircraft following bringing a dedicated CAS aircraft such as the Buccaneer S2B or Jaguar GR1A due to the spawn cost increase from this. You would be able to if it was re-class as “Jet Fighter / Naval Aircraft” like that of the Scimitar F.MK1 or the Phantom FG.1
Sea Harrier FRS1 (SQV) Only
RWR
The FRS1 (SQV) additionally has an underperforming RWR and should be able to identify the radars it can detect. Additionally it should be able to detect a wider range of radar bands.
This issue was reported 10 months ago by Flame
Sea Harrier FRS.1 - Should have ARI 18228/19 RWR
Sim Battle Rating
In the last BR Change, the FRS1 moved down to 11.0 in Air Realistic but remained at 11.3 in Air Simulator. Whilst the FRS1 does perform overall better in Sim compared to ARB, this BR now places the FRS1 directly against the Mig-23MLD which is vastly superior in literally every single respect/metric you use to compare the 2. It is unplayable at 11.3 currently and needs to be lowered to 11.0 ASAP.
Sea Harrier FA2
HUD
Much like the Sea Harrier FRS1, the Sea Harrier FA2 also has a placeholder HUD from the Harrier GR3, but this is far far more serverly felt. The FA2 is normally forced to engage at long range, well beyond the visual sight of the target in question and aligning the airframe optimally or guiding the aircraft into an intercept via the radar panel alone is not easy. Correcting its HUD is an absolute priority as it has MAJOR balancing impact compared to the FRS1 within Sim.
This was fully reported 4 months or so ago during the FA2s Dev server cycle by Gunjob internally.
If this cannot be fixed ASAP, then I implore the devs to consider a alternative placeholder HUD such as the Torando F3s to provide full A2A symbology, especially for radar contacts.
RWR
The Sea Harrier FA2s RWR should be able to identify targets fully, at the moment, it pings all targets as “IPD” which makes it very hard to know what you are defending against.
This was reported 4 months ago during the FA2s Dev Server Cycle by Flame
Sea Harrier FA.2- ARI 18228/19 should be able to identify radars
BOL
BOL In-game has been artificially nerfed signifcantly both for flares and for chaff.
Flares
These are technically not flares in the traditional sense, but instead a cloud of pyrophoric material. Which can be seen in this clip of a Tornado taking off and deploying BOL
Tornado taking off with BOL release
This cloud of IR material should produce an IR signature comprable to that of at least a standard flare if not a large calibre flare. But of course due to its nature, last for a much shorter period of time.
This was reported 10 months ago by Gunjob internally but can be read here
Chaff
Like flares, the chaff was also nerfed significantly without any justifcation and reduced to nearly 1/4 their IRL performance. IRL they have a mass of 45g vs the standard analog chaff packet which is 55g. Whilst there is a difference, it should be noted that BOL uses a plastic casing and the russian chaff cartrige used as the standard uses a metal casing. It is unknown if these wieghts include the casing or not, but if they do, then this explains the mass difference.
Either way though, the difference should be at most, 18% and not 75% as it is currently.
This was reported 9 months ago by Flame
BOL chaff effectiveness too low
The affect of these 2 nerfs can be felt by more than just the FA2 and are felt quite badly on ALL BOL users from the Gripen C all the way to the Viggen D. But the FA2 has it perticuarly bad. Considering the BR, it is often facing F-15C and Su-27SMs (and soon to be Su-34s) firing off large numbers of ARH Missiles. These would be difficult for the FA2 to handle at the best of times, but with the chaff at such a low effectiveness, it is exceptionally hard to reliably chaff these missiles. Additionally, with the aforementioned IR issues, defeating IRCCM missiles in the FA2 is extermely hard with BOL so in-effective. In this capacity i usually rely solely on the internal standard calibre flares the FA2 carries and I normally only run a small number of BOL flares.
Conclusion
The Sea Harrier is one of Britain’s most iconic aircraft currently in game and a incredibly important aircraft to our military history, and yet its representation in game is woeful. I have only outlined some of the most crtiical issues with its representation that serverly hinders its performance. Some of these issues are getting on for well over a year old now, and there has been no word that any of it is being worked aside from the FA2s RWR being able to identify some ground radars last major update.
The impact of some of these issues, especially those conerning the FA2, impact it so serverly that it is rendered neraly unplayable and in desperate need of a major BR drop if nothing changes in the very near future. Especially now the F-4F ICE shares a BR with the FA2 and outperforms it in nearly every metric.
So I please implore the devs to spend sometime finishing aircraft that were added 2 years ago now, and havent recieved any TLC in nearly a year.