Royal Air Force News Friday, November 14, 2025 P14
Feature Digital airpower
Former jump jet pilot ACM Harv Smyth was a
5th-gen F-35’s ro lie in Harrier and Tornado As the UK’s Carrier Strike Group F-35 Lightnings head for home, Chief of the Air Staff and Harrier veteran ACM Harv Smyth tells RAF News how fifthgeneration aircraft are transforming the way the Air Force fights
C FORERUNNER: CAS ACM Harv Smyth disembarks from a RAF Harrier at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan in December 2008, whilst he was Officer Commanding IV(AC) Sqn PHOTO: AIR HISTORICAL BRANCH (RAF)
URRENTLY DEPLOYED on Operation Highmast, RAF F-35s are exercising with veteran Italian Harrier and Tornado aircraft on Falcon Strike, the final combat drill to take place during the Carrier Strike Group’s eightmonth deployment. It’s a salute to the new Chief ’s own roles as a former Harrier pilot and a driving force of the UK’s F-35 programme – and an acknowledgement of the debt the Lockheed stealth fighter now operating from the deck of HMS Prince of Wales owes to its combatproven forebears. Since joining the RAF in 1991, ACM Smyth has flown hundreds of
operational missions over Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. “Flying the Harrier taught us to be exceptionally agile and unconventional in our approach,” he says. “The Lightning takes that mindset and supercharges it.” He now oversees the UK military’s shift to warfighting readiness following the Strategic Defence Review and RAF’s resumption of a nuclear capability with the purchase of 12 F-35A jets. With its game-changing STOVL (Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing) capability, the Harrier redefined basing options and survivability in austere environments. That capability is now combined with stealth and sensor fusion with the