I fear this Harrier learning curve is going to be steep and result in a Kola landscape dotted with BeachAV8R CSAR targets… 
It’s OK. I’m the one that often has to disassemble Ikea furniture because I missed the critical step on Page 2 and don’t realize it until Page 26.
Go get em’… The push and pull of the campaign is part of it. I kind of like it when RED pushes back and make things difficult…
My first mission on the map was a good one..mostly because I survived as I try to learn the Harrier. I only have the axis commands mapped and a few other like the trim..so I have a long way to go. Carried a couple Sidearms and destroyed a EWR radar that was (thankfully) undefended. Thanks to @jenrick for getting my eyes going to the right spots in the cockpit. I have a LOT of offline work to do to get minimally proficient.
This map really is beautiful…
@jenrick doing @jenrick things…
@fearlessfrog seems absolutely smitten in his Falcon..and seems to have picked up the systems very quickly as he keeps blasting RED air out of the skies!
The Harrier sure is fun to fly.. I just need to come to grips with how to actually fight in it.. Mad props to @Deacon211 for having made a career out of flying this nutty beast…
The HOTAS workflows of the harrier are .. interesting. One thing you really should keep in mind when dealing with them is that the thing was built with only the nose mounted camera and FLIR. Then AGM-65 was sorta tacked on. Using the baling wire dirty hack made for that the target pod was later added.
So the workflow for the DMAS is pretty dang slick and intuitive. The maverick workflow is kinda kludgy. The TPOD workflow is downright insane and has been reported as bugged many times until it was explained that this really is how the real thing worked.
Good luck bud! Did they fix the sidearm warhead? Last time I tried using it I only got percentage point damage on the SAM I was trying to kill.
I never really minded the harrier’s workflow but it was the first one I learned when it came to sensors and target pods and whatever so to me it is the root-structure of how those things should function 
Anyway, you all have been mightily busy… Leave something for me and my poor Hind!
It’s funny how that works.. you almost have to translate everything back to your ‘foundation’ knowledge set.
I know this question is on the verge of paranoia, but has anyone in this mission been shot down with anything yet, like died not due to a hitting something hard like the ground? There is like 1% of me thinking @BeachAV8R put 
‘Care Bear Mode = on’ and we’re all invincible in the mission or something?
Haha, not much of one! But thank you! 
@schurem is pretty much right on the money in his assessment.
The Harrier, with the Marine Corps being the primary contractor (at least for the B) was made very much with their needs in mind. What the Marines wanted, and arguably what they got, was an airborne artillery platform that they could take with them on their amphibious assault ships and which could follow them ashore as they moved further inland.
As such, you’ll notice a distinct lack of special or advanced weapons in its arsenal…some would say that this was not an accident.
Though no one would likely say this directly, and perhaps it wasn’t even decided consciously, the Marines were utterly pragmatic in requesting an aircraft that could drop dumb bombs, very well, and was capable of doing almost nothing else.
This had two primary consequences. The first was that the Marine Corps could justify this comparatively inexpensive jet. And the second (and perhaps equally important to the Corps) was that no air battle commander would ever take the Harrier away from the Marines to shoot HARMs, hunt warships with Harpoons, provide fleet defense with AMRAAMs, bust bunkers with Mk-84s, etc.
It literally couldn’t do half of those things, and was poorly equipped to do the other half.
But, with a good ARBS lock, it could drop a load of old, cheap, plentiful Mk-82s with near PGM accuracy.
…and come back to do it again in little more time than it took the Ordies to wrestle them onto the pylons.
Note that this was back in the ‘70s-‘80s, when LGBs didn’t exactly grow on trees, JDAM was a an epithet, and JSOW was some kind of pig.
Note also that the original Bs couldn’t self lase. So, if they did want to drop some of those “special” munitions, it was going to be for a FAC or FAC(A). And some might again argue that this was also not an accident.
Later, as technology moved on (and the Harrier risked becoming combat irrelevant), the Harrier community (including the Brits, Spanish, and Italians for whom the Marine Corps should be eternally grateful lest the Marines be given squat) lobbied hard for the inclusion of the LITENING pod and later the Radar.
But the Harrier would always carry the earmarks of its origins. The Maverick and the LGB were fitted onto the earliest model, the “Day Attack”. But the LITENING required some creative wiring and HOTAS integration.
And, because throughout much of the service history of the Harrier there were three models (Day Attack, Night Attack, and Radar) of the jet, the workflow of any one of them couldn’t be so different from the other two that you couldn’t fly them all on the same day. [Actually, efforts were made at the time to only have two models in a single squadron with a war deploying squadron often plussing up to only have the most capable type available].
So all this word salad aside, that’s why the more advanced capabilities of the Harrier sometimes feel like they were bolted on.
Because they were!
Possibly. I had a hard landing in the Kiowa yesterday after taking a AAA barage. Everything went black, but then sight slowly returned with the aircraft engine still spinning. Invulnerability?
You mean like the Britts stuffing chaff bundles into the speed brakes during the Falklands conflict?
FWIW, I dropped 4 x Mk-83s yesterday from the Hornet in CCIP mode. I’d forgotten how much fun that was. And yes, hit percentage was one direct hit out of the 4. The second and third were like 100+ yd misses, but last one hit like 25 yds from the smoke and only resulted in 15% damage on a truck. Didn’t seem fair. Would definitely do it again though.
Knocked out two SA-15, a Igla manpad and a bunch of armour at the nortwestern base of our own FARP. There’s still one there but I was out of missiles and didn’t want to risk getting fired at more. I think they fired two dozen missiles at me so they should be running low on that as well. Perhaps a targeted SEAD strike might allow me to sweep the area there.
@komemiute and @schurem were there and can help pitch in idea’s!
@fearlessfrog you might be correct on the invulnerability, I was half expecting the frontal part of the helo to have been blown up by some AAA/armour shot at me but no damage at all as far as I can tell. I just felt very lucky.
Attacking Skogsbasen(12). For reference, this is @PaulRix and I hovering 8 kilometers from the targets in the distance. Paul graciously lased targets for me, which resulted in a T-80 kill from my first Hellfire shot. Then he relocated to the other side, using terrain for cover. Unfortunately, the second Helfire refused to com off of the rail. I’m refining my HOTAS assignments today.
Later, I tried some PKWS rockets from this range and the first two shots hit the river bank or tree line just beyond the river. Let’s call their range more like 7 km. After Paul had reduced the other side a few more vehicles, I moved forward to about the middle of the lake, giving me three PKWS hits on his sparkle. I was holding pretty high over the targets. It was cool watching the rockets climb, then descend and fly parallel to the ground to strike the front of the target, vs the top like the Hellfire.
Brits didn’t mind specializing the Harrier a bit more, as there was the Sea Harrier FRS1 and the RAF’s Harrier GR3 types with different roles and equipment. The Falklands conflict wasn’t a NATO op (only one country has called on Article 5 so far of course) so lots of gaps in the capabilities they were expected to perform with (AWACs etc). They left Portsmouth with mainly AIM-9G’s and got the L’s fitted on the way down. How 20 Sea Harriers Defeated 100+ Enemy Jets
Yeah, it’s all very relaxing and all and I’m enjoying it a lot but I’m thinking it’s not my mad skillz after all lol - we should probably tweak that. I bet we start to then hate the SAMs a bit more now.. 
We can adjust it on the fly?! Go ahead then!
Honestly the SAM’s are not the biggest issue, those damn accurate triple A’s are so so dangerous.
I don’t know, was thinking it was some DCS mission flag that @BeachAV8R would have to toggle and then save/restart the server. Dunno.
Yes, I was on in the Harrier ~ 5 hours ago and despite trying very hard (overflying an active SAM site at 5k feet), and getting hit a lot, all systems kept working.
I am fairly sure invincibility is turned on
We are most definitely invincible.
I was going to say that that might have had something to do with why the Night and Radar Harriers (GR.9 and 11 respectively) had 180 expendables, but looking at pics online, I don’t see those buckets on the Brit birds.
Flying around in the Viper, those 120 go pretty quickly!
