Five Harriers flew over Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point on June 3 before a vertical landing marked the sundown of VMA-223, the Marine Corps’ final operational AV-8B squadron. Its last detachment had returned from a Caribbean deployment with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit in May.
For the squadron, the next aircraft remained in the future: the Marine Corps planned to reactivate it as an F-35B unit, VMFA-223, in fiscal 2028. For two retired Harriers, a more immediate assignment was already taking shape.
NAVAIR had moved the airframes from Cherry Point to the Center of Excellence for Corrosion and Finish in Chesapeake, Virginia, on March 24–25. Wings, parts and supporting equipment had traveled earlier that month. The transfer gave instructors full-size aircraft on which to teach work that cannot be reproduced as convincingly with a presentation or an isolated sample.
The Harrier was useful precisely because its structure presented different maintenance problems. Aluminum, composites and complex joints give trainees opportunities to practice recognizing and treating corrosion while working around the materials and connections found on actual aircraft. NAVAIR described the aircraft as instructional assets for maintainers.
Moving the jets took about a year of coordination among the AV-8B program office, Fleet Readiness Center East and the training center. The shipment included stands, carts and bins that otherwise faced disposal. Those items help turn a retired airframe into a usable work station: trainees need access to the aircraft and places to organize the parts they remove.
Sources
- VMA-223 celebrates sundown as Marine Corps’ final Harrier squadron — U.S. Marine Corps · 2026-06-03.
- AV-8B II+ not forgotten — purposefully placed — Naval Air Systems Command · 2026-04-22.