British sailors from HMS Duncan recently exchanged ships with their American counterparts on the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship equipped with Harrier jets.
This exchange occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean and provided a unique glimpse into life aboard a US Navy vessel, reflecting Britain’s historical use of Harrier jump jets on its Invincible-class carriers.
According to a news release, seven sailors from HMS Duncan experienced the operations and daily life aboard the USS Wasp while participating in joint exercises with the USS Wasp Amphibious Ready Group.
Engineering Technician Bradley Jones expressed his excitement, stating in the release, “If you’ve ever seen the film Top Gun, you’ve probably fantasised about landing on the flight deck of a US carrier. For one day, that became my reality, and it felt truly brilliant.”
During their 48-hour stay on the Wasp, the British sailors had the chance to witness the operational capabilities of the Harrier jets, an aircraft that the UK previously operated from its own carriers.
Jones highlighted the differences in daily life aboard the two vessels, noting, “What the Americans lack in comforts, they more than make up for in firepower. Any adversary wanting to challenge the USS Wasp would have to face the 2,000 Marines onboard, ready to spring into action.”
Jones concluded, “On behalf of HMS Duncan, I extend my true thanks to all those onboard the USS Wasp who afforded us their time and hospitality. It’s safe to say that the ties that bind our two countries extend beyond economic, cultural, and political realms, embodying a genuine mutual affection between our great nations.”
The fact that the USA is still operating harriers given their inferiority to F35B 12 years after the USMC entered IOC on the F35 shows just how far behind US procurement is in line with our own.
We know Wasp has been operating F35B before and it must be quite the downgrade for the ship and its ARG to have to go back to Harrier.
There are literally entire missions sets the ship won’t be able to carry out after loosing F35B.
It takes time to do that scale of a transition, and it’s also a question of the order in which the squadrons transition to the F-35. When Wasp flew F-35s, she was stationed on the west coast. The west coast Harrier squadrons had priority on the transition. All the west coast Harrier squadrons have made the switch by this point. Now Wasp is an east coast ship, and the F-35 transition is still under way. There are still 2 active duty USMC Harrier squadrons in operation. The first east coast F-35B squadron recently reached IOC and did an exercise in… Read more »
Good to know, I think the transition though between harrier and F35B is so immense it’s like moving from piston engines to the F4 phantom.
It’s must really screw up mission planing for the entire ARG.
Yes, the planning around the vastly different capabilities of the aircraft has to be a real pain.
Also, I should clarify that the F-35B and C squadron numbers I quoted above are to replace the legacy FA-18s, and A-6 squadrons that no longer exist, as well as the Harriers. The Marines have been saving their pennies for a long time to be able to afford the transition.
Yes, a lesser capability is better instead of axing a whole fleet leaving a gap like Cameron did.
Absolutely 👍
Burn that onto Cameron’s forehead!
sorry I should have read the whole thread first…
“axing a whole fleet”
Except most of that fleet went pre 2010 under Labour.
A force barely amounting to a Sqn and its MOB, RAF Cottesmore already earmarked to close as an RAF station was not a difficult decision.
Now Nimrod, the army cuts, the other RN and RAF cuts, I’d agree.
“Before the whole transition takes place, Harriers will absolutely stay operational. It’s better to have a lesser capability than completely gap it.”
Unless you are the UK of course…..
Of coarse there are many who have mentioned that if we didn’t sell the Harriers, we would have at least had something to embark in the earlier days of the QE’s and a gentle switch over to F35’s whilst having both types, might just have been a good thing. But I’m only bringing it up given the the USMC still see the Harriers as rather handy. Ark Royal (the Bigger one) had a fair mix of different aircraft for her entire career whilst the QE’s are a one trick pony in relative terms. Give me a mix of Buccaneers, Harriers… Read more »
The original plans was to have harrier on Queen Elizabeth. I was no fan of the gap we had however continuing to operate harrier in a mixed air group with F35 just seems like a waste of money. F35 is a quantum leap over aircraft like F18, over harrier it’s not even playing the same game. Queen Elizabeth is a one trick pony until the drones come along but that one trick pony can carry out air to air and air to ground missions better than any other aircraft and it can do it in the same mission. It’s even… Read more »
The problem is us getting the number of F35b in service to make that deference .
The other problem is how much bang can they carry…
Well if we’d gone for F35c we would of had more range and weapon load .But that’s along gone argument .👍
Yes, I’m not disagreeing at all……… hang on, just been invaded…. back later !
I’d have thought the harrier is much cheaper to operate than F-35, and may have been an ideal platform for all these middle east operations (if we had bothered putting a carrier there)
UK Carrier Air Wing is RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus for Middle East operations.
👍👍👍
HMS QE is a one trick pony? It can do carrier strike, fleet C2, HADR and support amphib ops with embarked helos and embarked RM personnel.
Or stay in port and be Big.
The original out of service date for the GR7/9 was 2018 before 2010 defencereviewcame along.. They would never have operated from the QE class.
The US, Italy & Spain are still operating them though, no reason we couldn’t have as well, especially to fill out the numbers of carrier capable aircraft we have.
It would have simply taken money away from F35 or Typhoon upgrades. Or at the time, further upgrades to Tornado GR4. Plus additional manning pressures operating another fast jet type.
I think many make the mistake of looking at decisions through the lens of the present and not the past. I’m not going to defend cuts but in 2010 Russia was much closer to the West despite its war in Georgia and West was charming the crap out of China. Threats we’re perceived to be smaller rogue states and non state actors. Having said that we need to learn that cuts do have a major impact, once capability has gone its take a long time to recover or its never recovered.
Oddly enough reading that the Italian navy carrier has a mix of F35Bs and Harriers which gives it a good punch,till it’s time for the Harrier to fly off into the sun set if only the UK did the same the flight deck wouldn’t look so empty 👍
I posted the above a link to a Cavour photo currently in Pacific with 8 F-35 and 7 Harrier in her deck plus 2 NH90 helis.
Those who talk about F-35 quantum leap blah blah do not understand that an aircraft like Harrier have all its issues fixed
Oh and the ship have 2 76m guns and 2 boxes with Aster…
👍
And yet Italy would give its right arm for a QE class sized carrier and a larger fleet of F35’s. Comparing F35 to Harrier is like chalk and cheese. I worked on Harrier. It was fantastic for its day, but it was also a royal pain to maintain and had/has many operational limitations. And expensive to operate compared to the return in capability.
As did her previous namesake, with a mix of inadequate and obsolete aircraft. Sadly U boat food. 🙃🕳️Btth.
I’m always up for a return of the Buccaneer!
😀
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Totally agree, the old swordfish was a crapheap before it started the story. Then it became a legend.. Old bag
How careless, they should have kept them tightly secured.
Is our procurement really rapid and ahead of the US? We only have a small number of our 148 F-35Bs – 30 in the UK, 3 in the US for testing and training.
JSF Programme Office is the boss of all national procurement efforts for F-35
Haha.
USMC needs to fight always that is why they have Harriers.
RN only thinks it fights from time to time.
The USMC has 189 F-35Bs – a figure greater than the combined total fighters of the RAF and Royal Navy.
Umh…The USMC are buying 420 F35’s of which 145 have been delivered for oerations from 16 ships. We should have such problems.
Couple of articles have mentioned “Top Gun” recently but neither explained why. The Wasp is no Nimitz and the Harrier is no Tomcat, can’t see why the reference to Top Gun is related ?
That’s right the Harrier is no Tomcat, however an exercise just before the Falklands war, Sea Harrier give the Tomcats a beating apparently. 👍
Only when the tomcats weren’t allowed to engage with their radar guided missiles…
As the Tonka F3 did on various occasions in Red Flag.
But the point I was making is that this Top Gun Comparison is rather hard to see if you have seen the film (s).
Why an Engineer mentioned Top Gun is rather odd given he was neither on a Nimitz and neither was it a Tomcat.
Might have well just said “Tora Tora Tora”.
Someone will be along in a while who utterly mis-understands any of that, can’t wait ! 🍾🍸🍺 Cheers.
Is that your engineering fantasy? Dvd 📀 coming up. Popcorn 🍿. 😬🙃🕳️Btth.
What’s Chinese for, “Tora Tora Tora!”?
All thanks to Google translate
Harrier have been used to good effect in the Red Sea taking out drones and cruise missiles.
Sea Harrier FA2 with the superb blue vixen radar and AMRAAM would have shot down F14s in BVR engagements all day long. Shame the radar and AMRAAM wasn’t fitted to the GR7 airframe.
Fair point 👍
Really? F14 had a radar and a Fox 3 that could punch out beyond 80 miles. Sea Harrier only carried a mx of 4 AMRAAM, had limited range, altitude and speed. In contrast the F14 could go very high, very fast and very long. And it could carry a lot of missiles.
I think also the reach of the Phoenix missile was longer than AMRAAM? I’d be be interested in understanding if Bluefox had the detection and engagement range of the F14+ radar.
The Phoenix Missile we’re unreliable and didn’t have a good success rate. AMRAAM much better the first one’s did have a shorter range but later variant given longer legs . Has for altitude and speed the Sea Harriers of the Falklands war up against the Mirage with less performance did rather well. 🍺
Yes, really. The Blue Vixen radar was genuinely superb. The Captor radar in Typhoon is a heavily developed version of Blue Vixen. It was developed to work with AMRAAM from day one. It had superb detection range, could track 20+ targets, with track while scan while providing mid course guidance to 4 AMRAAM shots. It was very automated for single pilot operations and had excellent ECM capability. It was digital compared to the Tomcats analogue AWG9 radar. (superb for its day) F14 also provided a very large radar target due to its size. Phoenix wasn’t very good against fighters, large… Read more »
Hi Robert – a late point on your post. I think I’m correct in that Blue Vixen paired with AMRAAM was the worlds first true look down shoot down capable system? (I mean the fist one that actually worked probably- but don’t tell the soviets!).
Hi mate. It wasn’t the first with that capability. But it was very very good. Blue Vixen was the first to operated with AMRAAM from day 1. The weapon was very well integrated. The pilots had a lot of fun with it.
great stuff Robert -thanks for the insights!
Well off topic, UAE just cancelled it Rafael deal with France!!! $10B fighter deal now up for grabs, UK will need to piss of France and Eurofighter partners like Germany would need to be onside. Germany may go for it though, its economy isn’t doing the best. Go on Starmer make the call…….. please……and yes I do feel I need to beg 😀
It does appear that the news on the UAE deal may be misinformation despite being on a number of outlets.