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Originally Posted by Commander Wallace
Happy new years Andrew and thanks for the response. If the new aircraft are anything like the British designed and built Hawk aircraft, they should be great. Of course, the U.S navy used them as trainers and attack aircraft and Saudi Arabia outfitted derivatives of Hawk Jets as attack aircraft.
English aircraft builders have always built great aircraft like the Spitfires, Hawker Hurricanes and Lancaster bombers and awesome engines going back to the Rolls Royce Merlin engine in the P-51 Mustang which allowed the P-51 Mustang to realize it's full potential.
That says nothing of the U.S marines adoption of the awesome English Harrier. The Falklands war proved how sound the design for the Harrier was. I always thought the U.K should have explored ways of making the Sea Harrier a mach plus aircraft. The Harrier was hard to beat years ago and I believe with advances to it's Blue Vixen radar and engines, It would be hard to beat now.
I think it will be difficult for the U.K to Improve on the Hawks.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1475686/saudi-arabia
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-n...d-saudi-arabia |
With regards to the Harrier indeed the UK did back in the 70s look into a supersonic harrier the P1154, however I do believe the AV8B built by McDonnel Douglas / Boeing is capable of Mach 1.2 in certain aspects of flight.
The British FRS1 and FA2 sea harriers did achieve supersonic flight during the Falklands on numerous occasions in dives but ultimately it is a sub sonic airframe