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It's awsome.
Best ground pounder after the A10. And like the A10 can use the laser guided Hydra Rockets. That can give you like 80 laser guided Rockets were each is capable of taking out medium armor. And 2-3 can usually take down tanks.
It's also faster so can do interdiction, attack enemy bases, bridges etc.
Really good pilot model in VR, if that's something you care about (I do)
You can fake it as a Sea Harrier for some Falklands war action.
And the Marine Harrier and British GR 5-9 are quite close if you want to dress it up for that.
It's a bit like a smaller, faster A-10. Very short take offs and landings are great fun, vertical if you like, but you can't carry much in vertical flight, and super short landings are easier than true vertical.
It accels at CAS operations, being based close to the front and supporting troops when anti air threats are low or when GPS JDAMs or remote designated lasers are available to drop from high altitude.
The module comes with a mini campaign by the famous Baltic Dragon. I just finished and enjoyed the Kerman Campaign by Ground Pounder Sims. It was superbly made and presented.
Planes like F-18 and F-16 are super capable, but the Harrier is probably more enjoyable to fly and fight. I highly recommend it. It's just a fun, good looking and reasonably performing within its role aircraft.
It's much lighter than both Su-25 and A-10C, and the engine is comparatively much more powerful. This makes it much more nimble than the Su-25, though the A-10C has the wingspan to feel nimble within its performance envelope. But the weight of the Harrier feels a little awkward once weapons start leaving the wings; you will very abruptly feel the flight characteristics change with every release.
It carries lower payload than either, obviously. But I don't find this to be a serious disadvantage to my playstyle. Bomb truck loadouts make the A-10C and Su-25 feel even more sluggish, while the Harrier handles its max loadouts in conventional flight very gracefully (offer not valid in STOL...). The Harrier shines when performing shorter range missions with quick turnaround between bombing and rearming, because you're hopefully launching from an assault ship or FARP that's closer to the target than the airfields.
Other than conventional flight, the Harrier can obviously do (V)STOL. Basically, the nozzle rotation lets you stay airborne at lower speeds than other jets can hope to achieve. In practice, you lose a lot of stability and control over the aircraft as the speed drops and your control surfaces start to lose effect. The reaction control system compensates for that, but it's like trying to walk on crutches. Still, it gets the job done in a controlled environment like take-off and landing.
I'd say the real joy of the Harrier though is that bombing is really, really fun. In the A-10C, I feel the airframe nudges me towards sniping with the TPOD: you squint at the screen and pick out targets, and then come in on an attack run. The HMCS gets you a little closer to flying freely, but still feels like TPOD sniping. But Harrier's FLIR hotspot detector directly on the HUD, the snappiness of targeting the DMT via HUD, and the nimbleness of the aircraft in flight, make me actually want to take off with loads of Rockeyes or plain Mk82's and just obliterate stuff in CCIP. If you've gotten accustomed to circling like a vulture and sniping with six mavericks, the Harrier could be a breath of fresh air. Leave the TPOD at home. You don't need it. Not even to fire IRMAVs.
The bad? Some of the workflows are less fun. The developer made the interaction between some systems much more realistic, and therefore clunky. Self-lasing a maverick involves a bunch of steps you need to execute perfectly, or it will screw up in a way you have to start over completely to recover from. Loading targets into GPS munitions is something I've already forgotten how to do from lack of practice. There are computer systems that are unimplemented or half-implemented. There are a ton of fascinating training and practice missions, but last time I tried (admittedly about a year ago), a bunch were literally broken because they added wheel chocks to the default ground start, but have the training mission start on an abandoned airfield with no ground crew. There is no "supercarrier" quality ATC or experience for landing on the Tarawa, and no intention to add that from what I've heard.
Excellent for on the fly CAS. Get the baddies location and the combo of great CCIP sights and the manoeuvrability vs other ground attack aircraft makes it very quick to get bombs on target.
And unlike the Su25 or A10. Interdiction and even strike missions are realistic in the Harrier.
Attacking enemy infrastructure is something the Harrier had in its original mission when designed. British Harriers attacked Baghdad in 99 and as late as 2011 Marine Harriers bombed targets in Libyan cities.
And as in my video it did get used for Combat Air Patrol in the 90s in both Iraq and Balkans.
So it's a very versatile aircraft, not a true Multirole aircraft, but almost.
You can definitely fly at 20 000 feet over an enemy city and drop GBUs or JDAMs on enemy installations.
Interdiction is absolutely part of the A-10's wheelhouse and it has been used in such missions. The Harrier and the A-10 are pretty functionally alike when it comes to BAI mission roles. They both require largely the same considerations (uncontested airspace, significant SAM threats removed via prior SEAD/DEAD flights, etc).
Strike in the Harrier might be pushing it. Obviously if we are talking exclusively about user-made DCS missions, it can get quite a bit easier since folks don't tend to set up anti-air defenses properly but one of the major requirements of the strike role is the ability to meaningfully cope with the chance of enemy aircraft and/or long-range SAM threats.
Still. In the context of a DCS mission, obviously things can be set up in a way where the Harrier can do a strike mission in the same way that one could do the same with just about any jet in the sim.