Hawker Siddeley Harrier variant
Hawker Siddeley Harrier AV-8C Harrier
The upgrade of the Marine Corps AV-8A fleet begun in 1979. It added electronic countermeasures equipment and a new inertial navigation system and, most significantly, Lift Improvement Devices that raised vertical take-off and landing performance; at the same time airframe components were restored or replaced to extend service life. The AV-8Cs and the remaining AV-8As were retired by 1987, replaced by the AV-8B Harrier II.
- May 5, 1979
- First flight
History
Why the upgrade
By the late 1970s the AV-8A had almost a decade of hard service and shipboard operations behind it, and the Harrier II was not yet available. The Marine Corps chose an update programme with two aims: extending airframe life and improving vertical lift performance, always the type's critical constraint.
What the programme covered
The work, started in 1979, added electronic countermeasures equipment and a new inertial navigation system to the avionics. The most substantial change was the Lift Improvement Devices, which made better use of reflected jet flow to increase lift in vertical take-off and landing. Several structural components were restored or replaced in parallel, which according to Military Factory added on the order of a thousand hours of service life to the Marine Corps Harrier fleet.
Service and retirement
AV-8Cs served with Marine attack squadrons — among them VMA-231, VMA-513 and VMA-542 — until the AV-8B Harrier II, introduced in 1985, took over. The AV-8Cs and the last AV-8As were retired by 1987.
A preserved example
AV-8C BuNo 158977 at Seattle's Museum of Flight illustrates that path well: built in 1973 and delivered to the Marine Corps as an AV-8A in 1974, it was later modified to AV-8C standard, served with VMA-542 and was retired in 1986. It was stored at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, until 2000, and is now on public display at the Seattle museum.