Indian Navy to Retire the Sea Harriers – World’s Only Operational Vertical Take-Off Jet

With the scheduled decommissioning of INS Virat and great difficulty in maintenance of the ageing Sea Harrier fighters, they are scheduled to be decommissioned on May 11, 2016, at a ceremony at INS Hansa in Goa. Admiral R K Dhowan, Chief of the Naval Staff will be the Chief Guest for the ceremony.

The Indian Navy will induct a new squadron of Russian MiG-29Ks in the ceremony replacing the British Sea Harriers. The MiG-29Ks will operate from the INS Vikramaditya, an aircraft carrier which has been procured from Russia.

India had planned to replace the Sea Harriers with the homemade Light Combat Aircraft (Naval) version but the program is more than 15 years behind schedule.

The Indian Navy bought 30 British-made Sea Harriers in 1983 but only 11 remain now. Over the years, 15 of them crashed killing eight pilots. The last Harrier fatality occurred in August 2009 in the Arabian Sea off the Goa coast.

Here are some interesting facts of the Retiring Sea Harrier:

1. The Sea Harriers, also called as the White Tigers, were inducted into the Indian Navy following phasing out of then obsolete Seahawks and served since 1983 aboard INS Virat.
2. The jet fighter can take off vertically giving them the ability to take off and land from a small clearing or the deck of a mid-size aircraft carrier.
3. The Harrier jump jet is the only fighter jet that is capable of doing that, making Indian Navy one of the handful of operators in the world that flew the magnificent jets.
4. The flexibility offered by the aircraft’s capability to undertake short/vertical take-offs and landings had enabled it to operate from any fixed wing carrier and had regularly conducted cross-deck landings on ships of foreign navies.
5. The Sea Harriers had an operational speed of 640 knots or 1,186 kmph.
6. It has a range of around 800 nautical miles, but, they fell short of exceeding the speed of sound at Mach 1 or 1,235 kmph.
7. The squadron of White Tigers has embarked on the carrier during Operations Vijay and Parakram providing the essential offensive posture to the country and ensuring readiness to react to any escalation by the enemy.
8. In last few years, the Harriers had added a new dimension to their operations with the increased multi-national exercises in which the Indian Navy participates.
9. These exercises have seen the Harriers facing eye-to-eye with the best in the business. The magnificent carriers and the flying machines of the American, French and British Navies have come, exercised and gone back suitably impressed.

The surviving aircraft will probably be mothballed at INS Hansa, the navy’s shore-based facility at Dabolim in Goa, before being dispatched to various naval stations around the country to serve as exhibits.