Needs a little work but is real low time!
Posted on 01/29/2011 10:01:49 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
India's sole current aircraft carrier, the 29,000 ton INS Viraat, is running out of Harrier aircraft. Two years ago, Viraat emerged from 18 months in a shipyard getting maintenance and upgrades. With its engine and hull refurbished, and its electronics upgraded, India has announced that Viraat will serve for another decade. But back in 2009, one Harrier had just crashed, and now only ten of the original 30 Harriers are operational. Since Britain recently retired the last of its Harriers, there's always the possibility of India getting some of those before they are scrapped
(Excerpt) Read more at strategypage.com ...
With the Indian Navy being one of the few going after Somali pirates, I say give them all the parts planes they want.
Needs a little work but is real low time!
Dibs!
Sorry, I’ve already made an offer.
/johnny
Have Harrier, will travel.
Somebody should make good use of those retired Harriers.
Used to be a series of post collapse action novels where the hero had a harrier. I don’t remember the titles.
Sounds interesting.
Somebody needs to tell the wise men at Strategypage that only US-built Harriers are designated AV-8. The Indian Navy operates the Sea Harrier.
And it has tested it’s Israeli built BVR missiles as recently as 2009.
http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/10979-indian-sea-harrier-tests-bvr-missile.html
And if they were talking about India buying 8 retired Sea Harriers from the Brits, that purchase didn’t happen.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=400895
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Already happened.
Maybe Britan should sell the rest of its navy to the Indians ... oh the irony!
The Harriers the UK just retired are GR.9s. No radar, no ability to carry any A2A missiles other than Sidewinders.
The Sea Harrier FA.2s were retired in 2006. Even if India could buy those remaining, they haven’t been mothballed and would take an enormous amount of rework to make operational.
Theoretically, the Indians could buy the GR.9s and have the US upgrade them with APG-65s into a configuration similar to the AV-8B+ (since the GR.9 is structurally the same as the AV-8B). The GR.9 would actually provide a better basis than the AV-8B, because the RAF had an extra set of pylons under the wings for Sidewinder carriage, and could carry four BVR missiles, two Sidewinders and two drop tanks. I don’t know whether the GR.9 could be updgraded to carry the GAU-12 25mm pod (since the Aden cannon was never bought and the GR.5/7/9 series lacked a gun) ...
The very low volumes (probably a maximum of 15-20 planes) would make it unfeasible to integrate a US radar. The current Indian Sea Harrier fleet use the Israeli EL/M-2032 radar and Derby medium range A2A.
I’ve heard some of the Drivers call the Harrier a Widow Maker.
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