Focus - First Test Flight of Super Hornet with 4x AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship Missiles

Navy Recognition ^ | 09 November 2013

[schurmann]

“... With the 1990s retirement of the Intruder, the over 15 year wait to integrate four Harpoons onto the SuperHornet can be called a lot worse than “proceeding prudently.”
...
I’m just still surprised it took this long to perform.”

Many more paragraphs would be needed, to present even the shortest, roughest summary of acquisition history/politics since the early 1990s. And that’s before addressing any external (actual) threat.

Best guess: USN system managers went through much backing/filling, second-guessing, and poker-facing to get F-18 to where it it is today. Never anybody’s first choice for strike, it’s still marginal; no other choices left right now.

Specific system test requirements crop up unpredictably, and can get delayed for reasons that seem trivial or less. Now and then, something that seems blindingly obvious gets ignored longer than excusable - in retrospect.

[tanknetter]

With the 1990s retirement of the Intruder, the over 15 year wait to integrate four Harpoons onto the SuperHornet can be called a lot worse than “proceeding prudently.”

Most likely driven by the focus away from the Middle East and towards the Pacific, it's more of an “oh crap, we never got around to it” moment for the strategizers.

I think you've got it. The focus has been on integrating all of the different asymmetric loadouts that have become typical of the War on Terror - Mavericks (of different types - IR vs Laser), various types of LGBs, various types of JDAMS and unguided rockets usually mounted in some combination to provide lots of different options for a mission involving loiter and responding to calls for support on the ground.

[tanknetter]

One more quick thing to add - look closely at those missles. They have blue bands, meaning they’re inert.

This was most likely a flight to test the aerodynamic configuration, rather than integration with the Superbug’s weapons systems. The Superbug has had lots of aerodynamic issues with carrying various stores. If you notice the picture shot from underneath, you’ll see that the pylons are “toed-out” by a few degrees. This was a change made during development (or even the early production run) because under certain loadouts and flight conditions lift would slide off the Superbugs’ wings. The additional drag penalty was considered acceptable to prevent that from happening ...