If you study your history - the support given from the sea during the last 10 years of war answers that question.
Go back further and see what having a MEF off the coast of Kuwait did with the Iraqi defenses.
Go back further and the Harriers (though it pains for me to admit!
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A little further back - well a long time now - and we can look at the success of STVOL during the Falklands of course.
As ALL know that have read my comments on the F-35B before - I'm no fan.
I think it will be a failure.
I personally didn't see the Harriers forward deploy with the advance during IOF, but rather stay right there in Al Jabar. I thought they would move forward to the southern Iraqi airfields taken if not operate from FOBs or those highways strips like they practice in Camp Lejuene - BUT THEY DIDN'T (as far as I know at least - Harriers experts feel free to provide other evidence); but even I have to give them the successes they have earned and, at least in a planning stages, the requirements for the aircraft.