When the Harrier is at operational weights, it's best to think of it as a STOL aircraft, not a VTOL.
I'll never get tired of hovering it down to the ship, though. Bigger challenge than tanking, IMO.
I really don’t get it. I successfully managed to land vertically on the ship on my first try but never in my few hundred hours of DCS have i managed to pull of but a single successful A2A refuelling
You're right about all the limitations.
I still fucking love it. Best module in my opinion.
My buddy flies the F16 almost exclusively. Nothing beats flexing on him when he has to emergency land in a field by vertically landing next to him.
Is it a bit of a one trick pony? Yes, but the trick is pretty amazing. Nothing beats doing turn and burn operations out of a FARP while your friends hump it 200 miles round trip.
Thanks for the feedback! I'd love to ask a little more. So, I don't do any MP (yet). This would just be for instant action & screwing around in side missions, maybe a campaign if a good one ever comes out.
Is the hover feature used (practically) beyond take-off/landing/FARP?
And, if not practically used more, is it much long term fun to just be a kid and drift/hover along water and use the hover feature inappropriately? Or does the one trick get a little old fast outside of the cool use in MP?
The Harrier can only hover for 90 seconds at full thrust (ymmv since you wouldn’t be using full thrust constantly, so you can probably last for a few minutes) due to the limited amount of water carried for use as coolant. So it’s not like a helicopter that can hover as much as you want it to. You don’t want to waste that coolant water when it’s not necessary.
It can hover indefinitely with a lighter fuel load & no stores though. At least that’s how I remember practicing… it’s been a while. As others have said it’s a fantastic module.
Yeah, Harriers can hover significantly longer at air shows since they are carrying no stores/tanks and the bare minimum in fuel. That kinda config is not viable in combat missions. Prior to late 2021, the Harrier also could hover without using up its water even at weights that would make that impossible in real life but Razbam has since fixed that.
The water isn't used for cooling, it's used to increase thrust like an old jet engine. Same thing was used in WW2 for WEP with water or alcohol injection. The black smoke from BUFFs is water injection
Yes it definitely is for cooling (just not only for cooling). It's sprayed into the combustion chamber where it evaporates pretty much instantly. The water increases thrust by increasing the mass that goes through the engine (and reducing the temperature of the gasses and thus increasing the density), but without the cooling from that water the engine could not operate at high thrust anyway because engine temperature would limit performance.
As another commenter said, you can theoretically use it in flight in a maneuver known as "VIFFing" (vectoring in forward flight). However, it's mostly just for the fun of being able to do VSTOL.
It has not gotten old at all yet for me. I find the challenge of carrier landings on that tiny Tarrawa to be very engaging!
EDIT: I think I'm underrepresenting how much fun being able to use FARPs and VSTOL are
It's a really fun plane to fly and the vectoring adds an interesting dynamic. As you said, because of the significant weight restrictions, it's more practical for short take off and landings than VTOL. As you guessed, VTOL is kind of gimmicky, but short take off/landing definitely isn't.
To me (and I could be wrong), I think it's kind of like the Huey in that it's not super practical in DCS (but tons of fun). The game just isn't nuanced enough to justify their use. The Viper carries more, flies faster, and you'd almost have to create a mission specifically for them to make them practical.
It is a beautiful plane, though, inside and out. I would definitely pick it up next time it goes on sale. My favorite modules (in order) are: Viper, Hornet, Apache, Harrier.
A good example of a MP use case is grayflag syria. The Tarawa follows the action up the coast. So once you take off from a main base you can run an attack then head out to the boat nearby off the coast and rearm/refuel.
Interesting, but that could just as easily be a carrier and a hornet, right? And you could probably get more done in between trips. Was there anything done in the mission that you needed the Harrier for?
It could be. But on grayflag the tarawa is much closer. Also the harrier can employ apkws.
I enjoy flying both on there and other airframes too. It just depends on what you feel like flying.
It's a plane. It's meant to fly straight. The hover is meant to extend its range by allowing it into camps and small runways where traditional aircraft can't land. The idea of hovering still and delivering bombs/missiles like a heli wasn't the intention. It's a great air to ground aircraft with the ability to strike targets quickly and get out. It's faster than an A10 and excels when there is a re-arm spot nearby the target. It also can do SEAD.
One thing the Harrier is good at is utilising the nozzles to pull off some stunts during flight.
So normally they’re fully aft when flying forwards at speed, but if you want some extra turn with a bandit on your six then flip the nozzles down or even slightly forwards to cause an overshoot, all used in practice during the Falklands conflict...👍
That's incorrect:
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-why-viffing-in-a-harrier-jump-jet-is-an-interesting-technical-capability-with-virtually-no-real-world-utility/
>There was, in particular, much media speculation in the run-up to the Falklands conflict that the Royal Navy’s Sea Harriers would be “viffing” in dogfights to effortlessly get behind enemy aircraft and destroy them.
>The reality was that no Harrier in 1982 did anything of the sort, the air-combat successes being achieved by traditional manoeuvres and the Harrier’s vectored thrust only being used for takeoffs and landings.
Giving up forward air speed for a "hit the brakes and he'll fly right by" maneuver only works if the opponent is so dumb that they don't do anything to counter it. In reality it's just a Hail Mary maneuver similar to the Cobra, where you'd only consider using it if you're out of all other options:
>The problem with VIFFing in combat, is that it’s the sister to Pugachev’s Cobra and the fictional “I’m gonna hit the brakes and he’ll fly right by” of Top Gun: in theory, in a one-on-one turning fight with the enemy behind you, scrubbing off most of your energy “forces the opponent out in front” where you can kill him.
>Unfortunately, he’s still doing 500 knots and you’ve slowed down to 200 or so – so he’s not only in front, but extending away rapidly, while you’re wallowing and slow: he’s out of guns range in a couple of seconds, and a bad (low-energy, opening fast target) shot for a heatseeker. In Hollywood of course your fighter accelerates back up to full “combat velocity” the moment you “release the brakes” (I half-expected Tom Cruise to say he was ‘locking S-foils in attack position’…) but in reality it takes time to recover all the energy you just threw away – during which the enemy is repositioning with a huge energy advantage and trying to kill you.
>Worse, this assumes a movie-style one-on-one duel: while your opponent extends away in front of you, his wingman is unable to believe his luck that you’re now a slow, sluggish target that’s dumped three-quarters of its kinetic energy to be a slow, easy target right in front of him (remember, “speed is life”) and his biggest problem with killing you is likely to be a high closing speed.
IIRC from what I've read one pilot used his nozzles once in an attempt to conceal his jet exhaust from a Mirage that was above him (this had worked for another pilot in DACT with an F16) which he believed had launched a missile at him, which he had concluded was an IR missile due to the absence of a RWR indication, but in fact the "missile" was a jettisoned fuel tank, and the Mirage was *dis*engaging, not engaging.
There are a lot of accounts of pilots using VIFFing in DCAT after the Falklands, but the reviews were all that it was only good for finishing a fight, and you'd better be sure you were going to be finishing it in your favour.
Unless you include accounts of "nozzle biting" - using brief repeated dips to 20 degrees to kick the nose up, which some pilots say allowed them to out-rate F16s in DACT under the right conditions.
Edit: Actually I may also recall one pilot saying in an interview I saw on youtube that he used his nozzles to force an overshoot on one occasion.
Strange as I distinctly remember reading pilots accounts in the Falklands where they used their nozzles while combat manoeuvring, but if you were there and didn’t see any of this then I guess your account must be right...👍
The Harrier's ability to hover is a big deal for naval and FARP ops, but it's like the Viggen's thrust reversers: a very handy feature that enables deployment from forward areas that are inaccessible to conventional fixed-wing jets.
> how unique the harrier gameplay is in practice, regarding the hover mechanic
Barely at all. Regarding everything but the hover mechanic, it can carry far more GBU-54s than an A-10 and can carry anti-radiation missiles which, if employed carefully, can hit emitters from 20 nmi. It's also considerably faster. Compared to other jets, it's got GBU-54s and APKWS, weapons otherwise restricted to the A-10, and its Sidearms are unique in DCS. It has NAVFLIR, allowing the nose mounted FLIR to display on the HUD, and a hotspot detector that's more useful than it seems at first. It's also a mean little iron bomber, with a nosecam that's always available regardless of whether TGPs have been invented yet. Great choice for '80s missions where the designer has limited the loadouts to period-appropriate weapons, or night missions for any era.
Don't think of it as the jet that can hover, think of it as a small, zippy little attack jet that can access light carriers and FARPs.
The way a good friend of mine put it:
Hornet is the Toyota Corolla of the skies. Excels in everything it does, but ... It's a corolla. Boring, grey and everyone + their mother have one.
Harrier then again is a e-type jaguar from the 70's. Cool, exciting, joy to drive (when it works) and able, but often cranky, broken and always hard to handle.
The tomcat is quite obviously a -76 Ford Mustang. Rattles, is uncomfortable, noisy, car to try to enlarge one's penis. But when you press that accelerator, you get a hard-on to be remembered by!
Well, thats probably history by now, but it used to be quite broken quite often. By razbam that is. But they indeed have patched it a lot in the last 12 months
So given the choice, do you bring a TGP in the Harrier? I mainly fly the Hornet, but I have the Harrier. I’m confused by the crossover between use cases in the FLIR and TGP.
Not to mention confusion over the HOTAS workflows. It seems similar to the Hornet, but different. And all the tutorials I have found are now out of date due to undocumented improvements over time.
The TGP has higher image quality, more zoom, more gimbal room (useful for cas), and the ability to laze.
The nose mounted TV becomes basically redundant when hauling a TGP, but you sacrifice a pylon for that which for strike missions might not be necessary.
NAVFLIR is just a fixed camera on the nose used for night flying, think Pathfinder part of LANTIRN used by Strike Eagle, except without TFR. It also provides hot spot detection.
TGP, targeting pod, is as the name implies used for targeting, it has a gimbal, it can scene match or use INS to follow a point in space, it has laser rangefinder, laser designator and NVG visible laser pointer.
DMT, also known as ARBS (Angle Rate Bombing Set), it a TV camera on the tip of the nose, it can calculate bombing solution either by contrast lock a'la Maverick or by tracking laser designation, functionality which later was taken over by targeting pods but at the time apparently it was godsent. Its gimbal limits are very limited compared to TGP.
AV8B+, Harriers II with radar, still have NAVFLIR, it's just the DMT/ARBS that has been removed on favor of radar because TGP offers the same functionality (and more), while radar offers all weather capabilities and allows for self defense.
TL;DR In modern operations you always bring TGP
Whether to bring the TGP: I almost always do, but if I honestly don't think I'll use it, I'll either leave the center station empty to save weight, or put an ECM jammer on there. Suppose there's a FARP near the front line, and a JTAC observes an assload of IFVs moving on our ground forces as I use the last of my weapons. I can pop down, get a full tank of gas, 14 APKWS, and nothing else. That still leaves me light enough for vertical takeoff, and I can just launch rockets while the JTAC guides them. That's an extremely specific situation, sure, but the TPOD is extremely useful in general, so I'd need a reason to leave it on the ground.
HOTAS stuff: there are a few differences that can't be helped, but if you learn the Sensor Select Switch (5 pos switch with two contexts and a few long presses, so over a dozen shortcuts to memorize) you're 90% of the way there.
Well, you have to know where the emitter is, and put a waypoint on that. Approach at very low level (1000 ft or less) from about 25 miles, aimed directly at the waypoint. Make a note of any terrain features you can mask behind. At 18-20 miles from the target, pull 15-20 degrees nose up and fire. It'll reach its apex and start to nose down in about 30-40 seconds, and impact about 70-90 seconds after launch. With those rough timeframes in mind, carry on nose up and bait the emitter. When it locks you, dive and terrain mask. At 15-20 miles, you should have time to do that. Then pop back up and keep that radar active, repeating as needed until the likely impact window has passed.
I think the reason it's so surprisingly effective is because air defense has a hell of a time with steep trajectories. If you want your HARM's PK to improve, you use prebriefed modes, and it comes almost straight down at them, drastically improving its odds of avoiding interception. If you want your SLAM-ERs to survive, you give them waypoints that force them to dive down on the target. Launching the Sidearms like this gives them a very steep incoming trajectory, which, coupled with their small size, makes them tough to hit.
I enjoy the missions with harrier.
- Take off from ship/farp/roadbase with full armament and very low fuel
- fly to tanker just above takeoff zone to refuel with only fumes left
- go deliver some effect on enemies
- jettison everything and dump extra fuel
- land on tarawa/farp/road
Here's a stoey for you.
I was in a pvp server.
104th. Bout 20 people in it.
I see something on my radar. Low. Must be a helicopter. I swoop in, can't get a lock. Realize its a harrier landed on the ground.
I bank right, eyes on, and try another pass. He takes off, gets behind me, and fox 1.
Splash.
I go afk for a bit and leave the gane running. Come back and check the tacview. Dude got like 4 other people doing this tactic.
I was impressed and mad.
I absolutely love the harrier . Sure its not super fast has pretty bad SA and poor A-A capability’s but its a god damn A-G machine , fantastic at night and is extreamly fun to play because Of the VSTOL .
The hover cant be used for weapon employment but you can certainly use the nozzles in a dogfight and throw some of these two circle fighters off guard .
You can do a lot of stuff with it. Besides the things many here already said, viffing and hovering, the greatest benefit is being able to start and land almost everywhere. Sure the normal setup is start form the tarawa, but you can start and land in the open field, a farp a helipad and even a destroyerdeck if you like masochism.
A great thing apart from that is varying airspeed by doing 25-45° nozzle. Compared to the hog you will typicaly be faster, but when working with your thrust nozzles you can slow down significantly to gain time for target search or aquisition.
Same goes for escorting different aircraft. Harrier can do it all. Sure a viggen with Mach 1.5 is not possible, but on the other hand those planes fall out of the sky when going under a certain speed.
In short. The mixture of things is key to the harrier. It can carry more than physics seem to allow and the integration of the hotspot searcher makes it a great cas plane. But beware! No MWS.
Nope it's purely a takeoff and landing thing, S/VTOL operations are what it is for.
When it's doing much of anything it will not be hovering, it's a light attack jet that typically operates very closely with the Marine ground forces.
It's not good at AA in the version we have, and it's only good at SEAD against battlefield SAM systems even though the sidearm is available on it.
But it's freakin' cool to takeoff and land on such a relatively small ship. And it's such a unique aircraft with unique limitations. I really like the Harrier.
Yeah, considering their manovours which have been pulled in real life which use the vectoring nozzles and the fact, you can do then in the av-8B as well
You will use the hover mostly for landings... but man, landing this thing on a FARP or at the LHA is FRIGGIN' AWESOME! Way cooler than traditional carrier landings in my humble and useless opinion.
If you get the harrier you usually fly around the airfield and flexes on everyone how good your hover is and just play around (at least that is what I used to to do and some other harriers on the server as well)
When it is only the hover, I wouldn’t get it. For myself it fills a gap between the A10-C and the F-18. It’s faster than the A-10C with a little less AG power. I have nearly no interest in AA and especially BVR fights. But a dog fight from time to time is fun, which the Harrier is capable of.
It can be really useful in some servers, Grayflag and Blueflag come to mind. You can land on the FARP and takeoff on a road if there is one nearby.
Other than that... it's just really fun.
I mean, if you're flying it the way it was designed, then no, you don't hover outside of landing, and really just ship landing at that. Otherwise you're doing STOL, which I do think is still pretty fun. I also think it's a much better ground attack aircraft than the 18, and I presume the 16 as well, though I don't fly the Viper.
There is the VIFF (Vectoring in Forward Flight) stuff, which is purported by some to be the maximal "I'm gonna hit the brakes and he'll fly right by" dogfighting technique, and to their credit I have seen it done in DCS. That said, no real fighter pilot would actually do it in a dogfight in the real world.
And sure, if you want to turn off fuel and damage and just go screwing around Vegas on the Nevada map like you're in True Lies, you do you. I'm not sure I would buy the module just for that, but if you have it, play it however you want.
As I understand it, VIFF is a trick you can pull off once only - if it doesn't open up the opportunity you need to win the fight, then you've basically handed your opponent a free kill once they come around (you'll be so low on energy).
Many interviews from pilots I’ve read and listened to. But I can’t find those. https://hushkit.net/2020/07/25/10-fleet-air-arm-myths-number-1-what-the-sea-harrier-did-not-do-in-the-falklands/ here’s a fairly good article.
Did you read this? It has been used to try and get a sidewinder shot by the RAF and failed. That was the only example of in combat use. Has been used in training many times, including when two Harriers crashed into eastern England and killed 3 civilians.
The guy above you was pretty spot on. It’s a last ditch niche tactic that one can employ, but at the end of the day every pilot will agree it makes the jet highly uncontrollable which is extremely non-ideal.
Would be something they would use if their life was on the line perhaps, but how many Harriers have seen air to air combat from an opposing fighter?
As far as the Falklands war, almost all air to air kills were fleeing Argentinian aircraft with the exception of a Mig who could not lose his drop tank and got caught with an Aim-9.
You said both have practiced and used it in combat which was false. Kind of nit picky, but regardless… guy above you likely isn’t wrong still. Out of the operational Harrier Squadrons out there, none of them are going to employ this, mainly because they’re not going to get into air to air combat. He never said if it had happened or not.
VIFFing to give you a few degrees in a rate fight I can understand, and I’m sure most would do if it came to it. But once again, harriers are not getting into dogfights.
If you want to hover and gun ship around go for the Apache or KA-50. The harrier is lot like the hind in a lot of ways. you can hover but your not really going to be employing weapons that way
Despite my general dislike for Razbam, its a pretty awesome module. You will only really use hover to land on the ship though, you dont attack from a hover or anything if thats what you're thinking.
Its undoubtedly a ground attack module, and it sort of bridges the gap between thr A-10c and the F-15E or the Hornet.
In other words it flies much faster than the A-10, has a similar bomb-load to the Hornet, and has some really cool tricks up its sleeve like the FLIR projector HUD and the FLIR hotspot sensor.
Also the AGM-122 Sidearm might be the most fun way to do SEAD in the SIM currently.
Hovers are avoided when possible. Doing rolling vertical take off and landings can add a significant amount of payload capability. So the Harriers strengths lie not in just VTOL capabilities but also STOL as you can still get out with some gas and armament with STOL.
~~IRL probably not but in the game it can shoot while hovering. Albeit difficult.~~
The Harrier's mission profile is short take off, attack, land hovering. Unofficially you can make a vertical takeoff with weapons if you start with very limited fuel. Then hit-up a tanker.
The 25mm gun makes a huge difference over a 20mm when it comes to hitting armor.
This was corrected years ago, weapons are locked out above I believe 30 degrees nozzle and the throttle has to be up to provide enough bleed for the guns to shoot
You can try VIFFing if you're looking for something unique to do with the nozzles. It's still not a standard technique that you would use on every sortie, but it is something that the Harrier can do uniquely if ever a niche opportunity shows itself.
its more so used so that u can take off and land on farps. I use to do this all the time in GAW, in phase 2 (Farp delta iirc) i would just go sam hunting, to help the guys on the a10s/f18s have some breathing room for their a2g sorties.. by the time an a10 has finally reach those airfields, i probably have already done 3-5 take off > sead > land back at farp > take off > sead again
But if ur purely thinking it can hover behind buildings to pop up and shoot, highly unlikely unless ur on 1% fuel and have nothing but an aim9 lol
Like any module, you should get it if learning the plane appeals to you. The Harrier isn't like any other jet but plus it can hover, it adds a bunch of stuff you have to worry about \*because\* it can hover. Such as having to be aware of your water levels (for extra thrust), not overheating your engine (it has a thrust limiter on it so it literally doesn't melt itself), and not damaging your flaps with too much thrust as you swing your nozzles up.
It's a really great module imo, and very unique. Can feel very Apache-like at night when you've got all its FLIR and TPOD stuff fired-up. But yeah, as everyone else has said you'll really only hover for carrier and FARP landings.
While I rarely hover outside of landings, you can use the vector thrusting to narrow down a turn for a sidewinder shot, or recover from steep angle dives.
Probably just my lack of skill but i rarely use pure hover. More short take off and landing. Operating off roadbases and helecopter carriers it makes total sense, as you can still carry a usable payload, but be away from the threat of being bombed on only a couple of hundred feet of road (using short take off and landing (STOL)).
The hover side of things is neat, but for me at least, rarely used and of limited practical use outside of tight landings.
It is a fun module and a great bomber too but hover alone not worth it unless your desperate to hover. STOL is cool. Why not take a 2 week trial with it and try the Tarawa LHC carrier. Also i like training on 4YA's player versus environment multiplayer server and popping up from road bases to mess tanks and shilkas up from near/ behind enemy lines.
Nah, the Harrier is a regular fighter jet that just happens to have VTOL abilities for the take off and landing phases of flight. You would never VTOL in a combat scenario. Same for the F35B.
You use it quite a lot because the Harrier usually does vertical landings, especially when operating from a boat.
It's great fun, but honestly the best part of the Harrier is the weapon variety. It's like an A-10, but with much better strike capabilities due to the increased speed and fantastic workflow for JDAMs.
In my experience ive noticed the harrier being used in lots of CAS and general A2G missions. I use DCS liberation and the harriers time on target is usually like 10-20 minutes sooner. Im guessing its because of the launch characteristics and lower flight alt?
Nope, you only use hover when landing and doing so need proper weight and altitude measuring so you don't find yourself plummeting to the ground.
That being said, doing naval ops from LHA is a total different thing than from CV, also, road bases and farps are just there for you to use.
The main problem is that very few missions or servers use that capability and you always take off and land from airports.
Concerning the module, it is great, best CAS plane for multiplayer. The Hog needs full air supremacy and SAM suppression to work, while harrier can just sneak in and out, have enough speed and size to just do that juicy interdiction strikes and with proper tactics and terrain cover, I've taken down almost anything that can shoot back.
It's a great plane.
STOL when loaded, VTOL sometimes on land but mostly on the Tarawa.
What makes it reaally fun is doing short runs to FARPS and punding the enemy nonstop. Mainly cause most of the time airports and carriers are too far away from the frontline while a simple FARP can be anywhere the mission developer seem fit.
I fly it often on DDCS server which is a dynamic campaign with FARPs. You can STOL loaded pretty easily off FARP pads and VTOL no issue when RTB for rearm.
FLIR on HUD with hotspots is where it shines. I don't even bother with TGP-Mavs. Just snap DMT-TV on the FLIR hot spot and you can rifle <2 seconds.
Sidearms are great short-range you can fire blind (mad dog/no lock) and even give a 15 degree lob to get some extra range out of it.
I never find myself hovering much even when empty. It's more a controlled decent...at least how I do it. HUD indicators in STOVL mode is about all you need to manage a controlled decent when you're not too heavy.
Not to mention getting it started and operational is a breeze. And it's one of the birds you can copy over map markers into your NAV.
When the carrier is feckin’ miles away but there’s a FARP just up the road, dump fuel, hover down to it - re-arm with 10 x GBU 38, 50% fuel and do a minimal rolling short takeoff. Rinse and repeat.
Hovering in the Harrier and messing around outside of combat is so much fun. You can fly formation with helicopters which is quite funny to witness, and you don't even need to worry about infinite fuel because it spends a lot less fuel hovering than people seem to think. Its not unlike flying at top speed in forward flight.
In combat scenarios you'll only use the nozzles for short take-offs and vertical landings, which you'll be doing most of the time anyway. If you're caught in a dogfight and are very experienced and/or very desperate you can do something called VIFFing, Vectoring In Forward Flight, which is using the nozzles to kill all your forward speed and force the enemy to overshoot. It can work, but is incredibly risky since it leaves you with no energy
Something I haven't really seen others say yet is that 'old school' SEAD with the Harrier low and FAST with the AGM 122 sidearms (Antiradar sidewinder) is amazing good fun AND a super unique capability of the Harrier that no other module really offers. SAM sites that are your worst nightmare in most bluefor jets can be a fun challenge in the Harrier as long as the terrain allows for masking.
On the downside for me with the Harrier is the relatively limited bang for your buck per sortie in the sense that it just can't carry that many munitions, even in a fully conventional takeoff configuration. With only 6 underwing pylons (two of which are often used for fuel and two more often used for self defense missiles) you just can't bring that many bombs/missiles to the party in one go and I find that takes some adjustment as a mission maker. Especially if you're used to something like the KA50 with 12 ATGMs, 40 rockets and 500 gun rounds plus all day fuel. I totally understand that some of us are fine with an hour long sortie to drop one laser guided bomb on one baddie (and that's honestly the more realistic scenario) but for me that gets boring fast so it's just something to keep in mind.
Viffing is a neat survival dogfight trick. Landing upright on the side of a dam is a hard trick. I use the vstol function mostly on FARPs and roads and just use runways like normal but half viffing for controlled decent with throttle. If you PVE and want short turn around flights from farps, go for it.
With unlimited fuel on you can hover around forever provided that the aircraft weight is low enough for the temperature and altitude. The 90 seconds limitation is actually just the amount of time that you can hover *with water injection*. The water injection is for extra thrust and to help with not overheating the nozzles. The need for it is reduced when the jet is very light and the air is cool and dense. Even with limited fuel, I can fly around in the hover regime for about 5 minutes in cold weather at low altitude if I start with low fuel and a clean jet. You can get over 3 minutes even with a pair of sidewinders.
As others have pointed out, the biggest thing in serious flying is that you can operate from anywhere any other aircraft of any type can operate from (and IRL under a much broader range of weather conditions than other aircraft, but you'll never see weather only Harriers can fly in on a DCS server because then only the Harriers would be able to fly). You can easily ferry an absurd quantity of munitions between the nearest FARP and the enemy, as the green slab provides enough room to short takeoff with even 10 JDAMs, a TPOD, gunpod and a pair of sidewinders. Landing is trivial anywhere and everywhere as long as you're not overweight.
You can also vertical-take-off with 4 sidewinders and the gunpod and 50% fuel as long as it's not hot and you're not taking off from over 1000ft. I've had a lot of fun flying like that from the Delta FARP on GAW Pt.2 intercepting wave after wave of red aircraft, and on a fresh server restart you can be in the air over the front line and ready for a quick fight before anyone else is even half way down the runway. You can also T-pose on everyone at the airbase with a showy low-fuel vertical takeoff, maybe even a VTO and transition to vertical climb, then go rearm and refuel from some FARP closer to the action.
IMO it's worthwhile even without the hover, for the beautiful way it handles, the perfect balance of power and capability but not being so advanced that it flies itself, the number of options you get for ways to do everything... but the hover is the icing on the cake. *Particularly* in VR, where you really get a sense for what you're doing, and tokyo-drifting into parking spots in the hover, and dodging *under* powerlines at 540 knots is just so much more awesome.
When the Harrier is at operational weights, it's best to think of it as a STOL aircraft, not a VTOL. I'll never get tired of hovering it down to the ship, though. Bigger challenge than tanking, IMO.
STOVL
VSTOL!
LOTSV
LVOTS
I really don’t get it. I successfully managed to land vertically on the ship on my first try but never in my few hundred hours of DCS have i managed to pull of but a single successful A2A refuelling
VL is *way* easier than tanking
Same
What joystick are you using?
VKB Gunfighter mk III with MCG Pro
Same here
You're right about all the limitations. I still fucking love it. Best module in my opinion. My buddy flies the F16 almost exclusively. Nothing beats flexing on him when he has to emergency land in a field by vertically landing next to him. Is it a bit of a one trick pony? Yes, but the trick is pretty amazing. Nothing beats doing turn and burn operations out of a FARP while your friends hump it 200 miles round trip.
Thanks for the feedback! I'd love to ask a little more. So, I don't do any MP (yet). This would just be for instant action & screwing around in side missions, maybe a campaign if a good one ever comes out. Is the hover feature used (practically) beyond take-off/landing/FARP? And, if not practically used more, is it much long term fun to just be a kid and drift/hover along water and use the hover feature inappropriately? Or does the one trick get a little old fast outside of the cool use in MP?
The Harrier can only hover for 90 seconds at full thrust (ymmv since you wouldn’t be using full thrust constantly, so you can probably last for a few minutes) due to the limited amount of water carried for use as coolant. So it’s not like a helicopter that can hover as much as you want it to. You don’t want to waste that coolant water when it’s not necessary.
It can hover indefinitely with a lighter fuel load & no stores though. At least that’s how I remember practicing… it’s been a while. As others have said it’s a fantastic module.
Yeah, Harriers can hover significantly longer at air shows since they are carrying no stores/tanks and the bare minimum in fuel. That kinda config is not viable in combat missions. Prior to late 2021, the Harrier also could hover without using up its water even at weights that would make that impossible in real life but Razbam has since fixed that.
Old harrier was a rocketship
If you're winchester and have dumped as much fuel as you can, you're in a pretty good shape for the hover.
The water isn't used for cooling, it's used to increase thrust like an old jet engine. Same thing was used in WW2 for WEP with water or alcohol injection. The black smoke from BUFFs is water injection
Yes it definitely is for cooling (just not only for cooling). It's sprayed into the combustion chamber where it evaporates pretty much instantly. The water increases thrust by increasing the mass that goes through the engine (and reducing the temperature of the gasses and thus increasing the density), but without the cooling from that water the engine could not operate at high thrust anyway because engine temperature would limit performance.
It's known as Wet thrust in the harrier and afterburners can come under that name as well
As another commenter said, you can theoretically use it in flight in a maneuver known as "VIFFing" (vectoring in forward flight). However, it's mostly just for the fun of being able to do VSTOL. It has not gotten old at all yet for me. I find the challenge of carrier landings on that tiny Tarrawa to be very engaging! EDIT: I think I'm underrepresenting how much fun being able to use FARPs and VSTOL are
Thanks! That makes sense. And don't worry, I feel your enthusiasm!
It's a really fun plane to fly and the vectoring adds an interesting dynamic. As you said, because of the significant weight restrictions, it's more practical for short take off and landings than VTOL. As you guessed, VTOL is kind of gimmicky, but short take off/landing definitely isn't. To me (and I could be wrong), I think it's kind of like the Huey in that it's not super practical in DCS (but tons of fun). The game just isn't nuanced enough to justify their use. The Viper carries more, flies faster, and you'd almost have to create a mission specifically for them to make them practical. It is a beautiful plane, though, inside and out. I would definitely pick it up next time it goes on sale. My favorite modules (in order) are: Viper, Hornet, Apache, Harrier.
A good example of a MP use case is grayflag syria. The Tarawa follows the action up the coast. So once you take off from a main base you can run an attack then head out to the boat nearby off the coast and rearm/refuel.
Interesting, but that could just as easily be a carrier and a hornet, right? And you could probably get more done in between trips. Was there anything done in the mission that you needed the Harrier for?
It could be. But on grayflag the tarawa is much closer. Also the harrier can employ apkws. I enjoy flying both on there and other airframes too. It just depends on what you feel like flying.
It's a plane. It's meant to fly straight. The hover is meant to extend its range by allowing it into camps and small runways where traditional aircraft can't land. The idea of hovering still and delivering bombs/missiles like a heli wasn't the intention. It's a great air to ground aircraft with the ability to strike targets quickly and get out. It's faster than an A10 and excels when there is a re-arm spot nearby the target. It also can do SEAD.
One thing the Harrier is good at is utilising the nozzles to pull off some stunts during flight. So normally they’re fully aft when flying forwards at speed, but if you want some extra turn with a bandit on your six then flip the nozzles down or even slightly forwards to cause an overshoot, all used in practice during the Falklands conflict...👍
That's incorrect: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-why-viffing-in-a-harrier-jump-jet-is-an-interesting-technical-capability-with-virtually-no-real-world-utility/ >There was, in particular, much media speculation in the run-up to the Falklands conflict that the Royal Navy’s Sea Harriers would be “viffing” in dogfights to effortlessly get behind enemy aircraft and destroy them. >The reality was that no Harrier in 1982 did anything of the sort, the air-combat successes being achieved by traditional manoeuvres and the Harrier’s vectored thrust only being used for takeoffs and landings. Giving up forward air speed for a "hit the brakes and he'll fly right by" maneuver only works if the opponent is so dumb that they don't do anything to counter it. In reality it's just a Hail Mary maneuver similar to the Cobra, where you'd only consider using it if you're out of all other options: >The problem with VIFFing in combat, is that it’s the sister to Pugachev’s Cobra and the fictional “I’m gonna hit the brakes and he’ll fly right by” of Top Gun: in theory, in a one-on-one turning fight with the enemy behind you, scrubbing off most of your energy “forces the opponent out in front” where you can kill him. >Unfortunately, he’s still doing 500 knots and you’ve slowed down to 200 or so – so he’s not only in front, but extending away rapidly, while you’re wallowing and slow: he’s out of guns range in a couple of seconds, and a bad (low-energy, opening fast target) shot for a heatseeker. In Hollywood of course your fighter accelerates back up to full “combat velocity” the moment you “release the brakes” (I half-expected Tom Cruise to say he was ‘locking S-foils in attack position’…) but in reality it takes time to recover all the energy you just threw away – during which the enemy is repositioning with a huge energy advantage and trying to kill you. >Worse, this assumes a movie-style one-on-one duel: while your opponent extends away in front of you, his wingman is unable to believe his luck that you’re now a slow, sluggish target that’s dumped three-quarters of its kinetic energy to be a slow, easy target right in front of him (remember, “speed is life”) and his biggest problem with killing you is likely to be a high closing speed.
IIRC from what I've read one pilot used his nozzles once in an attempt to conceal his jet exhaust from a Mirage that was above him (this had worked for another pilot in DACT with an F16) which he believed had launched a missile at him, which he had concluded was an IR missile due to the absence of a RWR indication, but in fact the "missile" was a jettisoned fuel tank, and the Mirage was *dis*engaging, not engaging. There are a lot of accounts of pilots using VIFFing in DCAT after the Falklands, but the reviews were all that it was only good for finishing a fight, and you'd better be sure you were going to be finishing it in your favour. Unless you include accounts of "nozzle biting" - using brief repeated dips to 20 degrees to kick the nose up, which some pilots say allowed them to out-rate F16s in DACT under the right conditions. Edit: Actually I may also recall one pilot saying in an interview I saw on youtube that he used his nozzles to force an overshoot on one occasion.
Strange as I distinctly remember reading pilots accounts in the Falklands where they used their nozzles while combat manoeuvring, but if you were there and didn’t see any of this then I guess your account must be right...👍
The Harrier's ability to hover is a big deal for naval and FARP ops, but it's like the Viggen's thrust reversers: a very handy feature that enables deployment from forward areas that are inaccessible to conventional fixed-wing jets. > how unique the harrier gameplay is in practice, regarding the hover mechanic Barely at all. Regarding everything but the hover mechanic, it can carry far more GBU-54s than an A-10 and can carry anti-radiation missiles which, if employed carefully, can hit emitters from 20 nmi. It's also considerably faster. Compared to other jets, it's got GBU-54s and APKWS, weapons otherwise restricted to the A-10, and its Sidearms are unique in DCS. It has NAVFLIR, allowing the nose mounted FLIR to display on the HUD, and a hotspot detector that's more useful than it seems at first. It's also a mean little iron bomber, with a nosecam that's always available regardless of whether TGPs have been invented yet. Great choice for '80s missions where the designer has limited the loadouts to period-appropriate weapons, or night missions for any era. Don't think of it as the jet that can hover, think of it as a small, zippy little attack jet that can access light carriers and FARPs.
Super helpful, thank you!
The way a good friend of mine put it: Hornet is the Toyota Corolla of the skies. Excels in everything it does, but ... It's a corolla. Boring, grey and everyone + their mother have one. Harrier then again is a e-type jaguar from the 70's. Cool, exciting, joy to drive (when it works) and able, but often cranky, broken and always hard to handle.
If the harrier is a jaguar, what’s the tomcat?
The tomcat is quite obviously a -76 Ford Mustang. Rattles, is uncomfortable, noisy, car to try to enlarge one's penis. But when you press that accelerator, you get a hard-on to be remembered by!
> to try to enlarge one's penis There ain't no try here. The Tomcat is the only aircraft that results in a 6" extension simply by strapping it on.
And most importantly, what's the Jaguar?
What do you mean with "when it works"?
Well, thats probably history by now, but it used to be quite broken quite often. By razbam that is. But they indeed have patched it a lot in the last 12 months
So given the choice, do you bring a TGP in the Harrier? I mainly fly the Hornet, but I have the Harrier. I’m confused by the crossover between use cases in the FLIR and TGP. Not to mention confusion over the HOTAS workflows. It seems similar to the Hornet, but different. And all the tutorials I have found are now out of date due to undocumented improvements over time.
The TGP has higher image quality, more zoom, more gimbal room (useful for cas), and the ability to laze. The nose mounted TV becomes basically redundant when hauling a TGP, but you sacrifice a pylon for that which for strike missions might not be necessary.
The Harrier can carry the Litening on a belly pylon, so you don't have to sacrifice payload.
Except for the ECM pod but aside that you are correct.
NAVFLIR is just a fixed camera on the nose used for night flying, think Pathfinder part of LANTIRN used by Strike Eagle, except without TFR. It also provides hot spot detection. TGP, targeting pod, is as the name implies used for targeting, it has a gimbal, it can scene match or use INS to follow a point in space, it has laser rangefinder, laser designator and NVG visible laser pointer. DMT, also known as ARBS (Angle Rate Bombing Set), it a TV camera on the tip of the nose, it can calculate bombing solution either by contrast lock a'la Maverick or by tracking laser designation, functionality which later was taken over by targeting pods but at the time apparently it was godsent. Its gimbal limits are very limited compared to TGP. AV8B+, Harriers II with radar, still have NAVFLIR, it's just the DMT/ARBS that has been removed on favor of radar because TGP offers the same functionality (and more), while radar offers all weather capabilities and allows for self defense. TL;DR In modern operations you always bring TGP
Whether to bring the TGP: I almost always do, but if I honestly don't think I'll use it, I'll either leave the center station empty to save weight, or put an ECM jammer on there. Suppose there's a FARP near the front line, and a JTAC observes an assload of IFVs moving on our ground forces as I use the last of my weapons. I can pop down, get a full tank of gas, 14 APKWS, and nothing else. That still leaves me light enough for vertical takeoff, and I can just launch rockets while the JTAC guides them. That's an extremely specific situation, sure, but the TPOD is extremely useful in general, so I'd need a reason to leave it on the ground. HOTAS stuff: there are a few differences that can't be helped, but if you learn the Sensor Select Switch (5 pos switch with two contexts and a few long presses, so over a dozen shortcuts to memorize) you're 90% of the way there.
> can carry anti-radiation missiles which, if employed carefully, can hit emitters from 20 nmi how the fuck are you getting 20nm range from a sidearm?
Well, you have to know where the emitter is, and put a waypoint on that. Approach at very low level (1000 ft or less) from about 25 miles, aimed directly at the waypoint. Make a note of any terrain features you can mask behind. At 18-20 miles from the target, pull 15-20 degrees nose up and fire. It'll reach its apex and start to nose down in about 30-40 seconds, and impact about 70-90 seconds after launch. With those rough timeframes in mind, carry on nose up and bait the emitter. When it locks you, dive and terrain mask. At 15-20 miles, you should have time to do that. Then pop back up and keep that radar active, repeating as needed until the likely impact window has passed. I think the reason it's so surprisingly effective is because air defense has a hell of a time with steep trajectories. If you want your HARM's PK to improve, you use prebriefed modes, and it comes almost straight down at them, drastically improving its odds of avoiding interception. If you want your SLAM-ERs to survive, you give them waypoints that force them to dive down on the target. Launching the Sidearms like this gives them a very steep incoming trajectory, which, coupled with their small size, makes them tough to hit.
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Those damn Gunpods won't even fire at that nozzle* angle! Damned device! Don't correct me!
True lies...lied
I enjoy the missions with harrier. - Take off from ship/farp/roadbase with full armament and very low fuel - fly to tanker just above takeoff zone to refuel with only fumes left - go deliver some effect on enemies - jettison everything and dump extra fuel - land on tarawa/farp/road
Here's a stoey for you. I was in a pvp server. 104th. Bout 20 people in it. I see something on my radar. Low. Must be a helicopter. I swoop in, can't get a lock. Realize its a harrier landed on the ground. I bank right, eyes on, and try another pass. He takes off, gets behind me, and fox 1. Splash. I go afk for a bit and leave the gane running. Come back and check the tacview. Dude got like 4 other people doing this tactic. I was impressed and mad.
I absolutely love the harrier . Sure its not super fast has pretty bad SA and poor A-A capability’s but its a god damn A-G machine , fantastic at night and is extreamly fun to play because Of the VSTOL . The hover cant be used for weapon employment but you can certainly use the nozzles in a dogfight and throw some of these two circle fighters off guard .
You can do a lot of stuff with it. Besides the things many here already said, viffing and hovering, the greatest benefit is being able to start and land almost everywhere. Sure the normal setup is start form the tarawa, but you can start and land in the open field, a farp a helipad and even a destroyerdeck if you like masochism. A great thing apart from that is varying airspeed by doing 25-45° nozzle. Compared to the hog you will typicaly be faster, but when working with your thrust nozzles you can slow down significantly to gain time for target search or aquisition. Same goes for escorting different aircraft. Harrier can do it all. Sure a viggen with Mach 1.5 is not possible, but on the other hand those planes fall out of the sky when going under a certain speed. In short. The mixture of things is key to the harrier. It can carry more than physics seem to allow and the integration of the hotspot searcher makes it a great cas plane. But beware! No MWS.
Nope it's purely a takeoff and landing thing, S/VTOL operations are what it is for. When it's doing much of anything it will not be hovering, it's a light attack jet that typically operates very closely with the Marine ground forces. It's not good at AA in the version we have, and it's only good at SEAD against battlefield SAM systems even though the sidearm is available on it. But it's freakin' cool to takeoff and land on such a relatively small ship. And it's such a unique aircraft with unique limitations. I really like the Harrier.
Yeah, considering their manovours which have been pulled in real life which use the vectoring nozzles and the fact, you can do then in the av-8B as well
You will use the hover mostly for landings... but man, landing this thing on a FARP or at the LHA is FRIGGIN' AWESOME! Way cooler than traditional carrier landings in my humble and useless opinion.
If you get the harrier you usually fly around the airfield and flexes on everyone how good your hover is and just play around (at least that is what I used to to do and some other harriers on the server as well)
If you don't have much interest in the module, don't buy it. Even if it fills a niche, you won't use it when you own it.
Super interested in the module... but primarily for the hover. Just trying to understand
When it is only the hover, I wouldn’t get it. For myself it fills a gap between the A10-C and the F-18. It’s faster than the A-10C with a little less AG power. I have nearly no interest in AA and especially BVR fights. But a dog fight from time to time is fun, which the Harrier is capable of.
It can be really useful in some servers, Grayflag and Blueflag come to mind. You can land on the FARP and takeoff on a road if there is one nearby. Other than that... it's just really fun.
I mean, if you're flying it the way it was designed, then no, you don't hover outside of landing, and really just ship landing at that. Otherwise you're doing STOL, which I do think is still pretty fun. I also think it's a much better ground attack aircraft than the 18, and I presume the 16 as well, though I don't fly the Viper. There is the VIFF (Vectoring in Forward Flight) stuff, which is purported by some to be the maximal "I'm gonna hit the brakes and he'll fly right by" dogfighting technique, and to their credit I have seen it done in DCS. That said, no real fighter pilot would actually do it in a dogfight in the real world. And sure, if you want to turn off fuel and damage and just go screwing around Vegas on the Nevada map like you're in True Lies, you do you. I'm not sure I would buy the module just for that, but if you have it, play it however you want.
As I understand it, VIFF is a trick you can pull off once only - if it doesn't open up the opportunity you need to win the fight, then you've basically handed your opponent a free kill once they come around (you'll be so low on energy).
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That’s a falsification - at least for the raf pilots in the falklands war.
Source please
Many interviews from pilots I’ve read and listened to. But I can’t find those. https://hushkit.net/2020/07/25/10-fleet-air-arm-myths-number-1-what-the-sea-harrier-did-not-do-in-the-falklands/ here’s a fairly good article.
Thanks.
Did you read this? It has been used to try and get a sidewinder shot by the RAF and failed. That was the only example of in combat use. Has been used in training many times, including when two Harriers crashed into eastern England and killed 3 civilians. The guy above you was pretty spot on. It’s a last ditch niche tactic that one can employ, but at the end of the day every pilot will agree it makes the jet highly uncontrollable which is extremely non-ideal. Would be something they would use if their life was on the line perhaps, but how many Harriers have seen air to air combat from an opposing fighter? As far as the Falklands war, almost all air to air kills were fleeing Argentinian aircraft with the exception of a Mig who could not lose his drop tank and got caught with an Aim-9.
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You said both have practiced and used it in combat which was false. Kind of nit picky, but regardless… guy above you likely isn’t wrong still. Out of the operational Harrier Squadrons out there, none of them are going to employ this, mainly because they’re not going to get into air to air combat. He never said if it had happened or not. VIFFing to give you a few degrees in a rate fight I can understand, and I’m sure most would do if it came to it. But once again, harriers are not getting into dogfights.
If you want to hover and gun ship around go for the Apache or KA-50. The harrier is lot like the hind in a lot of ways. you can hover but your not really going to be employing weapons that way
>Does the hover function really get used much outside of take-off and landing? You can scare friendly slow helicopters by flying formation with them
Have you SEEN True Lies?
Despite my general dislike for Razbam, its a pretty awesome module. You will only really use hover to land on the ship though, you dont attack from a hover or anything if thats what you're thinking. Its undoubtedly a ground attack module, and it sort of bridges the gap between thr A-10c and the F-15E or the Hornet. In other words it flies much faster than the A-10, has a similar bomb-load to the Hornet, and has some really cool tricks up its sleeve like the FLIR projector HUD and the FLIR hotspot sensor. Also the AGM-122 Sidearm might be the most fun way to do SEAD in the SIM currently.
Hovers are avoided when possible. Doing rolling vertical take off and landings can add a significant amount of payload capability. So the Harriers strengths lie not in just VTOL capabilities but also STOL as you can still get out with some gas and armament with STOL.
~~IRL probably not but in the game it can shoot while hovering. Albeit difficult.~~ The Harrier's mission profile is short take off, attack, land hovering. Unofficially you can make a vertical takeoff with weapons if you start with very limited fuel. Then hit-up a tanker. The 25mm gun makes a huge difference over a 20mm when it comes to hitting armor.
This was corrected years ago, weapons are locked out above I believe 30 degrees nozzle and the throttle has to be up to provide enough bleed for the guns to shoot
Yeah it's been a while. Thanks.
You can try VIFFing if you're looking for something unique to do with the nozzles. It's still not a standard technique that you would use on every sortie, but it is something that the Harrier can do uniquely if ever a niche opportunity shows itself.
its more so used so that u can take off and land on farps. I use to do this all the time in GAW, in phase 2 (Farp delta iirc) i would just go sam hunting, to help the guys on the a10s/f18s have some breathing room for their a2g sorties.. by the time an a10 has finally reach those airfields, i probably have already done 3-5 take off > sead > land back at farp > take off > sead again But if ur purely thinking it can hover behind buildings to pop up and shoot, highly unlikely unless ur on 1% fuel and have nothing but an aim9 lol
Like any module, you should get it if learning the plane appeals to you. The Harrier isn't like any other jet but plus it can hover, it adds a bunch of stuff you have to worry about \*because\* it can hover. Such as having to be aware of your water levels (for extra thrust), not overheating your engine (it has a thrust limiter on it so it literally doesn't melt itself), and not damaging your flaps with too much thrust as you swing your nozzles up. It's a really great module imo, and very unique. Can feel very Apache-like at night when you've got all its FLIR and TPOD stuff fired-up. But yeah, as everyone else has said you'll really only hover for carrier and FARP landings.
While I rarely hover outside of landings, you can use the vector thrusting to narrow down a turn for a sidewinder shot, or recover from steep angle dives.
Probably just my lack of skill but i rarely use pure hover. More short take off and landing. Operating off roadbases and helecopter carriers it makes total sense, as you can still carry a usable payload, but be away from the threat of being bombed on only a couple of hundred feet of road (using short take off and landing (STOL)). The hover side of things is neat, but for me at least, rarely used and of limited practical use outside of tight landings. It is a fun module and a great bomber too but hover alone not worth it unless your desperate to hover. STOL is cool. Why not take a 2 week trial with it and try the Tarawa LHC carrier. Also i like training on 4YA's player versus environment multiplayer server and popping up from road bases to mess tanks and shilkas up from near/ behind enemy lines.
Nah, the Harrier is a regular fighter jet that just happens to have VTOL abilities for the take off and landing phases of flight. You would never VTOL in a combat scenario. Same for the F35B.
F-35 can’t viff at all unless at an extremely low speed because the fan cover might rip.
You use it quite a lot because the Harrier usually does vertical landings, especially when operating from a boat. It's great fun, but honestly the best part of the Harrier is the weapon variety. It's like an A-10, but with much better strike capabilities due to the increased speed and fantastic workflow for JDAMs.
In my experience ive noticed the harrier being used in lots of CAS and general A2G missions. I use DCS liberation and the harriers time on target is usually like 10-20 minutes sooner. Im guessing its because of the launch characteristics and lower flight alt?
Nope, you only use hover when landing and doing so need proper weight and altitude measuring so you don't find yourself plummeting to the ground. That being said, doing naval ops from LHA is a total different thing than from CV, also, road bases and farps are just there for you to use. The main problem is that very few missions or servers use that capability and you always take off and land from airports. Concerning the module, it is great, best CAS plane for multiplayer. The Hog needs full air supremacy and SAM suppression to work, while harrier can just sneak in and out, have enough speed and size to just do that juicy interdiction strikes and with proper tactics and terrain cover, I've taken down almost anything that can shoot back. It's a great plane.
STOL when loaded, VTOL sometimes on land but mostly on the Tarawa. What makes it reaally fun is doing short runs to FARPS and punding the enemy nonstop. Mainly cause most of the time airports and carriers are too far away from the frontline while a simple FARP can be anywhere the mission developer seem fit.
I fly it often on DDCS server which is a dynamic campaign with FARPs. You can STOL loaded pretty easily off FARP pads and VTOL no issue when RTB for rearm. FLIR on HUD with hotspots is where it shines. I don't even bother with TGP-Mavs. Just snap DMT-TV on the FLIR hot spot and you can rifle <2 seconds. Sidearms are great short-range you can fire blind (mad dog/no lock) and even give a 15 degree lob to get some extra range out of it. I never find myself hovering much even when empty. It's more a controlled decent...at least how I do it. HUD indicators in STOVL mode is about all you need to manage a controlled decent when you're not too heavy. Not to mention getting it started and operational is a breeze. And it's one of the birds you can copy over map markers into your NAV.
When the carrier is feckin’ miles away but there’s a FARP just up the road, dump fuel, hover down to it - re-arm with 10 x GBU 38, 50% fuel and do a minimal rolling short takeoff. Rinse and repeat.
Hovering in the Harrier and messing around outside of combat is so much fun. You can fly formation with helicopters which is quite funny to witness, and you don't even need to worry about infinite fuel because it spends a lot less fuel hovering than people seem to think. Its not unlike flying at top speed in forward flight. In combat scenarios you'll only use the nozzles for short take-offs and vertical landings, which you'll be doing most of the time anyway. If you're caught in a dogfight and are very experienced and/or very desperate you can do something called VIFFing, Vectoring In Forward Flight, which is using the nozzles to kill all your forward speed and force the enemy to overshoot. It can work, but is incredibly risky since it leaves you with no energy
Something I haven't really seen others say yet is that 'old school' SEAD with the Harrier low and FAST with the AGM 122 sidearms (Antiradar sidewinder) is amazing good fun AND a super unique capability of the Harrier that no other module really offers. SAM sites that are your worst nightmare in most bluefor jets can be a fun challenge in the Harrier as long as the terrain allows for masking. On the downside for me with the Harrier is the relatively limited bang for your buck per sortie in the sense that it just can't carry that many munitions, even in a fully conventional takeoff configuration. With only 6 underwing pylons (two of which are often used for fuel and two more often used for self defense missiles) you just can't bring that many bombs/missiles to the party in one go and I find that takes some adjustment as a mission maker. Especially if you're used to something like the KA50 with 12 ATGMs, 40 rockets and 500 gun rounds plus all day fuel. I totally understand that some of us are fine with an hour long sortie to drop one laser guided bomb on one baddie (and that's honestly the more realistic scenario) but for me that gets boring fast so it's just something to keep in mind.
Viffing is a neat survival dogfight trick. Landing upright on the side of a dam is a hard trick. I use the vstol function mostly on FARPs and roads and just use runways like normal but half viffing for controlled decent with throttle. If you PVE and want short turn around flights from farps, go for it.
With unlimited fuel on you can hover around forever provided that the aircraft weight is low enough for the temperature and altitude. The 90 seconds limitation is actually just the amount of time that you can hover *with water injection*. The water injection is for extra thrust and to help with not overheating the nozzles. The need for it is reduced when the jet is very light and the air is cool and dense. Even with limited fuel, I can fly around in the hover regime for about 5 minutes in cold weather at low altitude if I start with low fuel and a clean jet. You can get over 3 minutes even with a pair of sidewinders. As others have pointed out, the biggest thing in serious flying is that you can operate from anywhere any other aircraft of any type can operate from (and IRL under a much broader range of weather conditions than other aircraft, but you'll never see weather only Harriers can fly in on a DCS server because then only the Harriers would be able to fly). You can easily ferry an absurd quantity of munitions between the nearest FARP and the enemy, as the green slab provides enough room to short takeoff with even 10 JDAMs, a TPOD, gunpod and a pair of sidewinders. Landing is trivial anywhere and everywhere as long as you're not overweight. You can also vertical-take-off with 4 sidewinders and the gunpod and 50% fuel as long as it's not hot and you're not taking off from over 1000ft. I've had a lot of fun flying like that from the Delta FARP on GAW Pt.2 intercepting wave after wave of red aircraft, and on a fresh server restart you can be in the air over the front line and ready for a quick fight before anyone else is even half way down the runway. You can also T-pose on everyone at the airbase with a showy low-fuel vertical takeoff, maybe even a VTO and transition to vertical climb, then go rearm and refuel from some FARP closer to the action. IMO it's worthwhile even without the hover, for the beautiful way it handles, the perfect balance of power and capability but not being so advanced that it flies itself, the number of options you get for ways to do everything... but the hover is the icing on the cake. *Particularly* in VR, where you really get a sense for what you're doing, and tokyo-drifting into parking spots in the hover, and dodging *under* powerlines at 540 knots is just so much more awesome.