Posted on 02/17/2017 11:49:05 AM PST by CivilWarBrewing
During his speech before a large Boeing crowd in South Carolina today, President Trump said he is considering a large order for more F/A-18E/F Super Hornets!
IMO, the F/A-18 is the all-around greatest fighter jet ever produced. It has proven itself as a reliable and effective all-weather fighter and is a great complement to America's arsenal of F-15's, F-16's, F-22's, and F-35's.
Gen Mattis likes these too.
I think this plane actually began life as the F-5 Freedom Fighter. Also a trainer.
It has just kept on evolving.
Make America Great again! We need these Hornets and the men to fly them! And the fuel to power them!
This is the answer. Tons of 18s, then a bunch of the deadly F-16s and F-15SE.
Glad to see some common sense return.
No.
Completely different design than the Northrop F-5.
The F-18 began as the YF-17 that competed against the YF-16 for the USAF lightweight fighter competition. It was a completely new design, but lost to the YF-16, which became the F-16.
The YF-17 was brought back as the F/A-18 for the Navy, Marines and export customers.
Northrop P-530 then YF-17.
Neg, it started as the YF-17
The only danger is we don’t want to fall into the trap of spending too much on existing tech and not moving forward.
With that said, the F-35 is a very expensive boondoggle at this point and suffers from severe mission creep. The Super Hornet is still a match for anything anyone has, anywhere. It will perform admirably for the near to medium term.
Probably for the Marines. I can’t imagine why. LOL.
We should also start up production of the A-10 Warthog again. It is a proven design, and various changes to it have made an already great plane a superior one for ground support. It is highly survivable, kicks like a pissed-off mule, and has both better engines and WAY better avionics than when first built (similar to the Super Hornet vs. the original Hornet).
Best of all, you don’t need flight testing to know that it works - just build 500 of what you last built, plus spare parts sufficient to keep them (and the present fleet) flying for 20-30 more years. It’ll be VERY cost-effective - lots of bang for the buck.
BA is up a bit right now. LMT is down.
It’d be interesting to see a “shoot out” between an F18 and F16.
"More hawg please."
Between the F-5 and the YF-17 there was a distinct evolutionary design process at Northrup/Grumman. Most were paper projects but the family connection is there.
That being said, the F/A-18 E & F are great planes, but real short legs even with tanks.
The program was resurrected by McDonnell Douglas and presented to the US Navy as a replacement for fleet fighters and attack airplanes. That us how it got the designator F/A-18. Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas and is now the manufacturer by title, but not concept or design.
You are both correct in your own way. The F-20 was an advanced variant of the F-5 which lost to the F-16. The F-5 was also a variant of the YF-17 which eventually became the F/A-18. The F-5 is still used for dissimilar air combat training and the T-38 is the trainer version, still in user with the AF for UPT.
We need to keep the A-10 active too, the F-35 cannot compare.
F-16 won the fly off against the F-17, but Lockheed hasn’t taken as good care of its legacy fighters (from General Dynamics) as Boeing has with those from Macdac.
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