Talk:McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II

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McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 9, 2015.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 2, 2011	Good article nominee	Listed
September 12, 2011	WikiProject A-class review	Not approved
October 26, 2011	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
December 27, 2011	WikiProject A-class review	Not approved
October 7, 2013	WikiProject A-class review	Approved
January 2, 2014	Featured article candidate	Promoted
Current status: Featured article

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Origin of name

Hello, I'm thinking of removing the phrase "Named after a bird of prey" from the lead paragraph, because it sounds too specific and the name is not only applicable to this particular aircraft, but the Harrier Jump Jet aircraft family as a whole. I've already moved the mention of the name to the other article several weeks ago. --Sp33dyphil (talk) 03:00, 22 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm ok with that change. Go for it. Sario528 (talk) 17:16, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a real problem with referring to the Harrier name like it is. Rewording to clarify is preferable to simply removing text, imo. -Fnlayson (talk) 17:21, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"uniqueness" needs rewrite

The article reads:

Further analysis shows that U.S. Marine senior officers never understood the uniqueness of the aircraft.

The word "uniqueness" is problematic -- it should be removed, and the sentence should be rewritten to spell out exactly what it was that senior officers failed to understand.

Karl gregory jones (talk) 14:52, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What is the problem with "uniqueness" ? MilborneOne (talk) 15:11, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is certainty unlike any other aircraft in US Marine inventory. There are not many aircraft with vertical takeoff and landing capability via vectored thrust like the Harrier that are in operational service. -Fnlayson (talk) 22:31, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken those two sentences out. It's opinion. It could be rewritten as "in the opinion of author Lon Nordeen, US Marine senior officers never understood the uniqueness of the aircraft" - but that would raise the question of who is Lon Nordeen? I've never heard of him. Google Books says that he used to work in the marketing departments of McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing, which doesn't reflect well on his credibility as an impartial source. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 19:06, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously? What makes some newspaper hack who know absolutely nothing about aircraft at all a valid source? Have you even checked the book for its references and documentation? It's not just Nordeen's opinions, but is well-researched and documented. Many of a company's harshest critics used to work for them, especially Boeing. You'll need to challenge the source properly to remove this, which hasn't been done. BilCat (talk) 20:49, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]