Sorry Sorefingers, it's you as knows zilch about the Harrier. Claymore has got a far better handle on it. There were two types of Harrier used during the Falklands War, the Fleet Air Arm's Sea Harriers and those flown by the RAF. The RAF Harrier's were GR variants (Ground Attack/Close Support), the Sea Harriers were the only aircraft on our side that were air-to-air combat capable, being equipped with Sea Fox radar. The only reason they were successful against the Argentinian Mirage's was because the Mirages stayed sub-sonic. True enough the Harrier is manouevreable, but it has tremedous difficulty in getting into a firing position against a super-sonic target. The Harrier's "succes" against missiles (predominently heat seeking missiles) is down to it's design - it has four vectored exhaust nozzles, instead of one or two fixed exhausts, therefore it's heat signature is more diffused and harder for a missile to acquire.

In an earlier posting I made a comment about the Argentinian Air Staff not being good at artihmetic. At the start of the conflict the Argentinian Air Force had 35 Mirage Fighters, the Fleet Air arm had 20 Sea Harriers. Those twenty aircraft were tasked with combat air patrols to protect the Task Force and to provide defensive air cover for the troops onshore. If the Argentinian Air Staff had recognised this weakness, they should have said to their Mirage pilots, fly out sub-sonic, as soon as you encounter Sea Harriers go to full reheat, the Harrier then cannot touch you, then shoot down one Sea Harrier, I know you don't have enough fuel to get back to the mainland, so bail out over east Falkland and we will fly you back. All it would have taken for Woodward to withdraw Sea Harrier cover from the land forces would have been the loss of three or four of his Sea Harriers. That would then have given the Argentinian Air Force complete air superiority over the Falklands.