is to buy 10 acres of land outside a Marine air base and wait for one to crash on it. That was cold.

The Harrier is a damned cool airplane but it is a real handful to fly and has a bad accident record. Interestingly enough, when it first entered service (the AV-8A model), the Marines put some of their most experience pilots in it and had a low accident rate. Some genius had the bright idea of putting new pilots into the Harriers and the accident rate soared.

The Harrier is pretty vulnerable to SAMs and ground fire. It appears to be more lightly built than most other tactical aircraft, so it can't withstand the damage. Those nozzels are like magnets for heat seeking missiles and they're in a vulnerable part of the airframe (kind of like the Mi-24 Hind helicopter).

The Harrier is loud as hell, especially when it's hovering. I was a vendor back in Oshkosh 96 with my booth near the flight line. Several times that week, a Harrier took off for an airshow act. The SOB kept hovering all to close to my booth. Even with fingers jammed in my ears, it was painful. Drove away potential customers, too. By about the 4th time he did the hover, I was looking for a .50 cal or a Stinger to shoot him down myself. The only thing that compared to a Harrier's noise level was when a B-1B took off. Being near the ass-end of 4 big jet engines in full afterburner is no fun.