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By Lon Nordeen, Jim Laurier
The Harrier II jet observed clash in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm (Gulf War), Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Iraqi Freedom (Iraq War). The airplane has matured right into a multi-role platform in the course of the addition of an evening imaginative and prescient approach, radar, an exterior concentrating on pod and new laser-guided guns.
In the Nineteen Seventies the USMC received the AV-8A Harrier from the united kingdom to check V/STOL options for shut air aid. A winning investment conflict used to be for that reason fought within the Nineteen Eighties to safe army, political and fiscal aid to extend this idea to enhance and box the second one iteration AV-8B Harrier II from the overdue Eighties onward. The AV-8B used to be, and nonetheless is, the single tactical airplane which could installation with Marine forces on amphibious attack ships and supply air conceal and shut air aid cut loose huge deck plane vendors. Having noticeable motion in-theatre in the course of Operation barren region typhoon in 1991, the Harrier II was once seriously fascinated about motion once more over Iraq from March 2003 as a part of Operation Iraqi Freedom I/II. within the preliminary clash, a few seventy six AV-8s have been deployed - delivering greater than forty in keeping with cent of the third Marine Air Wing's fixed-wing offensive firepower. round 60 of those plane have been sea-based aboard 4 'Harrier carriers', whereas devices flew from Ahmed al Jaber, in Kuwait. in contrast to in 1991, whilst the Harrier II devices hired unguided guns - dumb bombs, cluster bombs and napalm - in 2003 seventy nine in line with cent of the ordnance dropped used to be precision-guided. This used to be essentially as a result AV-8B's upgrading into evening assault or radar-equipped configuration, and creation of the Litening concentrating on pod. Following the career of Iraq by way of Coalition troops, the Harrier IIs remained in-theatre aiding anti-insurgent operations via to 2008 as a part of OIF II. Flying from Al Asad, or 'Harrier vendors' within the Northern Arabian Gulf, those devices observed huge motion in southern and western Iraq. This e-book is the second one of 3 volumes on USMC Harrier IIs in wrestle, and it'll be the 1st quantity in print to hide the total tale of the AV-8B's provider employment in Iraq.
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Extra info for AV-8B Harrier II Units of Operation Iraqi Freedom I-VI
Sample text
Lt Col Woltman was one of those pilots who made use of the FARPs; ‘As our forces – Marines as well as Army – headed north, we had to fly further from the boat, and that was when we started refuelling and rearming Harrier IIs at the ex-IrAF base at Al Numaniyah, five miles south A VMA-311 ‘Det A’ AV-8B commences its takeoff run from LHA-1 on 25 March 2003. This aircraft is carrying a 1000-lb GBU-16 LGB beneath its port wing. com Capt Jason Duncan, Sgt Gonzales (avionics technician), Sgt Harrison (ordnanceman) and Lt Col Mike Hile pose for the camera at An Numaniyah FARP during the evening of 10 April 2003.
We had fuel bladders and ordnance available at the site, and pilots could sit on the ground ready to fly standby CAS as and when requested. We ended up flying 200+ sorties from that facility, amply demonstrating the flexibility of the Harrier II. ‘Being the XO of MAG-13, I didn’t get to fly quite as often as the junior pilots due to the administrative demands of my job. When assigned a mission, pilots would sortie in whatever jet was available. We tried to optimise the make up of the twoaircraft sections so that one of the jets would be a radar bird, as the pilot in the latter aircraft had more situational awareness when it came to locating targets in poor weather.
At the start of the war we still had fewer Litening II pods than aircraft, and there were flight limitations for landing when carrying a pod and a 1000-lb GBU16 bomb. Since we could not bring both the bomb and the pod back aboard because of weight issues relating to the Harrier II’s hovering performance when the weather began to warm up, we sometimes had to drop the GBU-16 before landing. Everyone complained about this, so the test pilots at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, in California, flew a series of quick proving flights in their AV-8Bs to clear the carriage of the pod and the smaller 500-lb GBU-12, and this helped out significantly.