Almost 10 years after the last British-made Sea Harrier was retired by the
Indian Navy, the United States Marine Corps (USMC) is set to retire the AV-8B Sea Harrier Jump Jet. What made the Harrier family of aircraft unique was that they were designed to fly in a high intensity conflict, should the Cold War turned hot. It was assumed that if hostilities were to break out, then airfields from which fighters and bombers would be some of the first targets to be hit.
The spectre of losing critical infrastructure, such as runways on airbases, would render the otherwise fully functional fighter fleets of the combatants useless. The most basic solution was to have fighters fly from dispersed and ad hoc air fields or highways, but without the facilities available at these airbases, these operations couldn't take place for an extended period. The Indian Air Force continuously practices taking off and landing from various expressways spread across the country.
Another solution around the problem was to have runway independent aircraft such as the Harrier family of jets. These aircraft could theoretically take off from any open field, without the worry of the state of the runway on its return. Another advantage of a system that the US Marine Corps took fancy to was the ability of the aircraft to be operated from quite literally anywhere due to their Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL)/ Short Take-off and Vertical Landing (STOVL).
For the Marines it meant that they could deploy the aircraft anywhere close to the frontlines and hence have reduce the time for close air support, plus the aircraft could land back, rearm and return faster than other aircraft dependent on airbases which were located further much further away. The Soviets too operated similar aircraft called the Yakovlev's Yak-38 and had developed the Yak-141.
“End of an era. Technological marvel Harrier was. It gave solution for restricted area operations, from smaller aircraft carriers and land hideouts. Its vectoring in forward flight gave an edge in air combat against more superior air superiority fighters. For Marine Corps, it was a boon since it supported US Marine induction in far off shores. It is for this reason that technology has been largely retained in F-35B with VTOL/STOVL ability. Long live VSTOL", says Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha, the former Western Fleet commander and a naval fighter pilot who flew the Sea Harrier.
Another advantage of these aircraft was that they could operate from smaller aircraft carriers. This removed the need for complex steam powered catapults and arresting gear that are required to reduce the speed of the aircraft in a safe and mageable level. This is the reason why the Indian Navy and the UK's Royal Navy operated the aircraft in large numbers.
The Indian Navy started operating the MiG-29K from first the INS Vikramaditya and later the indigenous INS Vikrant. Parallely both the Royal Navy and the USMC have moved on to the F-35B the VTOL/STOVL version of the fifth-generation fighter.
