Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: terryr@ogicse.ogi.edu (Terry Rooker)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Harriers on US ships, have they got takeoff ramps ?
Message-ID: <14503@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 6 Mar 90 04:22:25 GMT
References: <14467@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR
Lines: 29
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: terryr@ogicse.ogi.edu (Terry Rooker)
In article <14467@cbnews.ATT.COM> munnari!batserver.cs.uq.oz.au!anthony@uunet.UU.NET (Anthony Lee) writes:
>
>
>All the RN carriers have takeoff ramps for their Sea Harriers.
>What the about the USN, do they have ramps on their ships for their
>Harriers ?

Actually the USN has no Harriers.  The cynical view is that they would
threaten the existence of those large supercarriers.  More
pragmatically, why mess around with a sub-sonic VSTOL aricraft when
you have supersonic Hornets and Tomcats?  The Mairnes operate the
AV-8B which is an improved version of the original Harrier.  They can
operate them off of USN helicopter carriers (i.e. amphibious assault
ships).  There is no reason they couldn't operate off the larger
carriers, other than you'd be giving up Tomcat/Hornet deckspace for
them.  Since the aircraft belong to the USMC, they aren't permanently
assigned to the LPH/LHAs, so there is little rationale to install
ramps.  





-- 
Terry Rooker
terryr@cse.ogi.edu