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Can I start by saying that I don't think Lutzow is saying that SHAR was a dog, or that it didn't have it uses, he's simply pointing out that making the aircraft out to be something it wasn't is counter productive. And, in so far as it goes, I agree with him

1 She had a very small wing and cosequently her range was abyssmal.
-This is true. SHAR was a dedicated air superiority type, and range wasn't good enough. At a range of (IIRC) 100nm the FA.2 could patrol for about an hour, which isn't really very good. With retrospect, the extra range of the big-wing Harrier II would have been really useful, even if it did come at the expense of the slightly reduced speed/acceleration. A Harrier II derived SHAR FA.2 may well have been able to get a quartet of AMRAAM out to 100nm and kept them there for a couple of hours, which would have been a far better air superiority platform. [NB: Figures are entirely speculative, somebody would need to crunch quite a few numbers in order to be able to actually say definitely what the difference would have been. However, bear in mind that the baseline Harrier II has roughly 60% more range than the baseline Harrier I.]

2 Her Pegasus was so underpowered that she struggled to land with two AMRAAMS under hot conditions in the Gulf.
-True, by the time they were retired, the SHAR FA.2 were barely able to operate in the Gulf. This is not to rubbish the design (it hadn't been part of the brief to design SHAR FA.2 to operate in the Gulf) but given that SHAR FA.2 was operating in the Gulf it needs to be considered. Again it comes back to one of those tantalising 'what ifs': if SHAR FA.2 had been based upon Harrier II it would have been possible to drop in the more powerful Pegasus 107 and the type could have been usefully employed in the Gulf.

3 She had a wonderful radar latterly but pilot workload was so horrendous that it was rarely used to it's optimum performance.
-Not entirely sure I agree with this point, but it is valid to a point as I understand it. Basically, if the plane was flying CAP and there wasn't any need to nurse the plane through a complicated manoeuvre, then the pilot could get the most out of the avionics, but once you add manoeuvring into the mix then you loose quite a bit of the capability of the system. But that is true of any single seat fighter (until you start talking about 4.5th generation or above fighters, one of the criteria of which is highly integrated and automated avionic/FCS which allow the pilot to do more things at once than was previously possible).
Again with retrospect, the pity is that the truly brilliant Blue Vixen wasn't given air-to-ground modes, and that the avionics package didn't have a heavier emphasis upon attack. And, once again, in a theoretical Harrier based SHAR FA.2 it may have been possible to fit a LTD and a meaningful war load.

4 It became a legend in the Falklands(mainly press oriented) when the real hero was AIM9L Sidewinder which downed over 90% of the Argentinian aircraft. A big thankyou to Presd. Reagan for ensuring that supplies of the missile were awaiting the Task Force at Ascension.
-Agreed to a point. AIM-9L was a real edge, but the ability to generate sorties and manoeuvre into a shooting position is down to SHAR FRS.1. Although theoretically normal Harrier GR.3 equiped with AIM-9L could have done the same provided that they were being vectored into position by an AEW platform (to make up for lack of an onboard radar).

5 After Falklands the UK sat back and awaited the orders to flow in, but apart from a handful for India, nothing else materialised. Surely a damning inditement on SHAR?
-Agreed absolutely. The real difficulty was that SHAR was basically too specialised to appeal to other Harrier-carrier operators except India (who had ample land based air support available for strike in any conceivable war). Once again with the benefit of hindsight, a theoretical Harrier II based SHAR FA.2 with a meaningful attack capability may well have appealed to other Harrier operators (Blue Vixen is a better radar than the APG-65 IMHO).


When you get right down to it, SHAR is sorely missed, but one shouldn't be romantic about the aircraft itself: it had flaws, and although nobody can be blamed for not being clairvoyant during the design phase, it did mean that the aircraft itself had severe limitation. With the benefit of hindsight (and only with the benefit of hindsight), a British version of the AV-8B+ (i.e. a Harrier II with a Blue Vixen and the ability to act in air superiority and attack modes) would have been a better investment. Such an aircraft could well have been the primary or even sole type for JFH, and it could be operational now.
And that's the real shame of the loss of the SeaHarrier, that the RN had to integrate their fast jet force with the RAF's in a destructive and highly divisive process that has resulted in the effective fast jet force of the FAA being halved. The loss of the avionics-weapons package of the SHAR FA.2 is a blow, but the loss of a squadron of personnel is far worse.