That's right, Jesus. I haven't watched that movie in like 20 years so I just took a shot in the dark at what jets were really popular at the time and we were flying the shit out of F16s during the Gulf War.

Harriers were fucking nightmares for the mechanics and avionics techs that worked them.

Sounds like you actually know. It's been over 2 decades since I saw that movie, but I'm sure they handwaved it with something like that.

The book is fucking terrible but it's great pulp scifi. It's obvious that by the time he wrote it nobody dared edit him, so there's multiple parts of the book that repeat but worded slightly differently, and in general the plot etc just aren't great and the whole thing is thinly veiled Scientology propaganda ("Psychlo catrists" – psychiatrists, ie. 'ol Ron's worst enemy). But if you take it for the pulpy weird mess it is, it's fun.

I don't know that I'd call it really good, but it made more sense. At least until they nuke the alien home world and the whole thing blows up because it's hollow and filled with explosive gas for some reason.

Still, you can always tell illiterate motherfuckers when they trash talk a novelist, even a pulp novelist, based on a movie adaptation.

For a writer he was not concise in his explanations.