I feel the same when fellow Italians starts clamoring for a F-104.
Whats the point? Beside an arguably debatable good look?
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Never heard that story, so I had to look it up. Seems like it happened to two harriers.
One in Germany in 1971 and another in England in 1987.
Mark Felton has a nice video about the first, that was indeed intercepted by Starfighters. It crashed in Denmark after running out of fuel.
The latter Harrier was intercepted by a USAF transport aircraft, no less!
I guess we all have our favourites.
But when it comes down to what aircraft that module makers chose, I think availability of information is key.
Iām like @PaulRix. I see a new add on, I want it. The Lightning wouldnāt have been my choice either, but itās such a quirky aircraft that I just must get it 
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From wikipedia
A Lightning was tasked with shooting down a pilot-less Harrier over West Germany in 1972. The pilot had abandoned the Harrier which continued flying towards the East German border. It was shot down to avoid a diplomatic incident.
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In A-A two missiles a gun and a crap radar sounds similar to the F-5E-3 and they were used in the adversary role as MiG-21 simulators in exercises.
As an interceptor some kind of GCI would be required that the game doesnāt have and also some had a ground to air datalink as well.
In the 1970s over Germany, F.2As (with better endurance) must have been there for low altitude work and as far as combat goes Saudi Arabia did use them in anger against targets in Yemen AFAIK.
I see some references to this, but also one that evidently took of from Denmark, pilot ejected and the Harrier continued eastwards. Intercepted by 104s but ran out of juice.
Hereās a discussion on pprune about it, with an excerpt from an article by the pilot.
And then thereās the Harrier in -87.
Could there have been three incidents of pilotless Harriersā¦!? Amazing if thatās the case.
Canāt find any solid info debunking either versionā¦
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Iām driving so could only link the wikipedia article but there is another article somewhere with pictures. Iāll find it when I get a minute.
For a plane so renowned for being hard to fly, harriers do like wandering off on their own
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Who knows!? Maybe Delta Dart and Avro Arrow will follow
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Ok. Well let me find the article with the pictures later and we can see for sure.
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Not even slightly. Iām actually just trying to have a little discussion about an interesting article I read. It might even be totally fake. Iām not trying to upset or argue with you. I dont really understand the hostile tone hereā¦
Iām not trying to disprove anything. Iām actually interested in the subject matter. I just distinctly remember seeing pictures in the article and would like to see them again and see if the story makes sense.
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I think weāre all just sharing interesting old war stories here, not discounting anything 
We are living interesting times at the moment and many of us have a lot of tension in our lives, which can sometimes seep through to the tone here. Letās try to keep things easy going - weāre all friends here. 
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This one of the GR.5 in England seems documented.
But I have come across two different accounts of Harriers being intercepted before it could reach East Germany. One account says intercepted by Starfighters and crashed due to fuel starvation and the other says shot down by Lightnings. Either these two incidents have been mixed up, or it happened twice (third time, counting the one in England).
Disregarding the one in England, both other stories seem pretty confident of the details. Especially since I have read at least two accounts of this being the Lightnings only A/A killā¦
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Even BAE systems acknowledge a Lightning shooting a Harrier.
This is an excerpt from the book āLightning Boysā:
So letās be careful with accusations of discounting anybodys accounts, ok?
It seems to me that it is indeed plausible that both the Starfighter and Lightning intercepts occuredā¦
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For historical sake, Iād love that.
However, we only have a partial cockpit section left, some models and odds and ends. Drawings and engineering data was all destroyed when the project was cancelled.
We recently found a test model in the bottom of Lake Ontario, they would shoot the models over the lake to test some aerodynamics.
The rest survives in photos.
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Wikipediaās Lightning page also has a reference, but it appears to be incomplete. See reference 106 on that page.
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For single player, a great plane. I can imagine a great campaign for it.
For most people in multiplayer, totally useless. Itās an interceptor, not a fighter. Having flown so many planes in SF2, including the Lightning, not all fighters are great to fly. Lightning versus bomber or transport? Yes. Versus any other fighter in DCS right now? Dead.
I suppose a missiles-only fight against a MiG-19 might be square, but as soon as you close to guns rangeā¦ Missiles of that era were junk and you barely got any besides. They were all designed to shoot down bombers outside the range of the bombersā guns, not hit a fighter.
So while I think this is a great historical plane, I can just imagine people complaining that they canāt get anything done with it online. I only fly coop anyway, I donāt like dueling with humans, but I know there are many who feel the opposite way.
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Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing. I dont expect to see it much on true multiplayer servers. It goes fast in a straight line and up. Not real maneuverable.
But seeing their Lightning in this state, tells me that Iāll never see the Super Tucano. They keep pushing ahead other projects.
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Iām not so sure that most DCS players are ardent multiplayers. I thought I read that a good majority stick with single player.
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I think youāre right. For most people it will be hard to do well with this jet in the current modern meta. But some people might be able to do well with it just like some do well with MiG-21ās and F-5Eās. If it gets all-aspect Red Tops it might even be properly dangerous to unaware foes. Furthermore, hopefully it will find a home in the handful of cold war era servers, even if it will be tricky to do well with it there.
Although I agree the background I could find on the reason for developing this jet is a little sad. It seems to be that the artwork is being done by Decoy, the (former?) community manager of Razbam. Decoy lost his job as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic and is now working on this instead. With that said, I also hope Razbam pulls through on its other projects. I want my MiG-23 and F-15E 
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