First of all I voted yes on the harrier being able to hover. Yes I think think the yak 141 and f35b she be able to hover to and keep there ability to afterburn. To my fellow Marines out there who knows anything about the harrier I got this. The harrier hovers in combat to out manvuer fighters not just for take off and landing. There is no ceiling hieght to how high it can hover, it just depends on engine preformance and weather conditions. The payload doesn't matter knowing that the fighter was orginally made to carrier a nuclear wealpon. IT doesn't need afterburners cause the harrier has a water system which pretty much works the same way an afterburner works but a totally different concept, which in injecting water into the engines to increase preformance and therefore thrust. I think in this simualation, all fighters should be able to show there combat abilities from the Av-8B to the SU-37.

uhm, dunno where this thread topic came from but ya - i agree. they should be able to 'hover' during combat, and they pretty much can. In game, the pathetic hovering for the AV-8B+ is done through thrust vectoring; the F35 is actually an F-35B, even though the hangar shows the rolls-royce liftsystem.
most loadouts for older STOVL must be kept low(in payload, to keep room for fuel) since there's virtually no wing-surface lift for assistance in vertical land mode.

i've been working with HAWX's guts trying to get the AV-8B+ and F-35 to simulate hovering(if not truly hover), but so far its difficult without making the plane fly very very strangely.
the best way i can see is to create a new aircraft ability for "super-stable", which would reduce the airspeed necessary to prevent stall all the way down to 1mph for a dozen seconds or so. Like i said, its difficult to do...HAWX doesnt like to give up its secrets like most games. but i've been working on it along with my Planned Aircraft Variants mod(might be integrated into nightwolf613's warlord mod..undecided)

EDIT:
little typos and general awkward articulation