The Harrier is an iconic (in the truest sense) example of what was possible when British Aviation was at its prime. It was a revolutionary design back in the 60s, and has seen many improvements and even a complete re-design in the shape of the Harrier II, which saw McDonnell Douglas get more heavily involved, giving the US Marines their much beloved AV-8B, and the British the Gr.5/7/9, all of which had new carbon-composite wings, massively upgraded avionics and improved versions of the doughty Pegasus engine, which was always at the heart of this legendary design.
The Harrier is a taxing aircraft to fly due to the high pilot workload, and requires the best pilots to do it justice in the hovering flight mode especially, where the pilot must control the throttle, direction of the airflow, and make minor adjustments to its attitude and altitude with the use of puffer jets, even before having to do anything ‘basic’ such as dogfight, navigate, or land. The original Harrier to reach service at the very end of the 1960s was the GR.1, which still bore a quite striking familial resemblance to the prototype and the earlier (and smaller) Kestrel, having a pointed nose and relatively confined canopy that hadn't yet been ‘blown’ to improve the pilot’s ability to move his head around to gain better situational awareness. The GR.3 had a more powerful engine, the laser tracker in a peculiar ‘anteater’ extended nose fairing, as well as many sensor, avionics upgrades, and Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) upgrades. When the GR.3 was transported to the Falklands in 1982 to back up the new and untested FRS.1 Sea Harriers, they were refitted with new pylons that could carry Sidewinder missiles with all the necessary cabling and avionics changes, so that it would be able to replace any possible SHAR losses, as until that point the Harrier was mainly used in the Ground Attack/Support role in the RAF. With the re-development of the aircraft into the Harrier II, the anteater nose was phased out and the new composite winged GR.5 with massively improved avionics, engine and other systems took over the mantle. For the most part, the general public don’t really see them as different machines, and the media’s constant reference to them as “jump jet” makes the eye-corners twitch for those that know.
