Aircraft Carriers and JSF

Allardjd I know you said that we have had a hangover from operating the Harrier for 40 years...

Actually, it was Hot_Charlie who said that, and he knows a thing or three about what's happening (and was happening) in your MoD.

My understanding of the Falklands air operations by the Agentinians is that they operated almost no Air-to-Air forces to screen their raids, but rather simply sent attack aircraft against the ships.  After the first day, they depended mainly on low-level raids and didn't seem to make much of an attempt to find and engage the Harriers.  

The Argies were operating at the extreme limit of their range.  They had only two KC-130 refuelers and those were needed to fuel the A-4s and the four (yes, only four - they had five but used one for spare parts) Super Entenards.  The Daggers and Mirages did not even have aerial refueling capability.  The Argentine jets literally had about five minutes of loiter time in their target area and could not use afterburners because of fuel limits.

It just doesn't appear that the Argentinians ever made much of an A-A effort, possibly because they lacked much depth and certainly because the meager logistical support they had available was being used to support the attack aircraft.  I can only find two references to combat engagements between Harriers and fighters during the entire war, both of which went badly for Argentina.

Part of reason for those successes by the Harriers was the availability of the superb AIM-9L Sidewinders, the first of the all-aspect models that could lock on leading edge heat and could be used to engage AC from any angle.  The Argentines had only the French Matra 530 which was a decidedly inferior weapon.  The Argentine fighters were at a severe disadvantage operating at the extreme end of their combat radius with poor weapons. 

I say again, in a contested, modern air environment against modern aircraft, the Harrier would be toast.

We could have wiped them out if we wanted to.

Please explain that, Vulcan.  Why would you have NOT wanted to "wipe out" escaping aircraft who were very likely to return to raid the ships another day? 

I believe the USMC lost something like one third of their harriers in accidents

The list in your link shows only 18 US Harrier losses, of which 4 were combat losses in the 1st Gulf war (Wiki, elsewhere, says 5 combat losses).

It's probably not a complete list, however, because I know of one loss to an engine failure near here within the last year or two that was not listed.

I found a record which says the USMC inventory is about 175, so adding the lost AC from the list back in gets you to somewhere short of 200 total.  Eighteen losses from 200 is nothing like a third. Taking a conservative view and doubling that number of losses is still only about 18% of the inventory.  USMC IOC for the AV-8B was in August 1985 and it remains in service.  That's going on 27 years of service and three wars (Gulf I, Gulf II, Afghanistan) plus some minor scraps, so a total attrition rate of 18% (or less) over that time isn't too alarming.

We wouldn't be popular in the UN!

Roger that - mushroom clouds are pretty much frowned upon these days, though if a certain east-of-Iraq and west-of-Afghanistan nation manages one I'd guess that any critical resolutions would be quickly vetoed by certain permanent members of the Security Council.