Posted on 01/05/2016 9:47:28 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Faced with delays in the adoption of the F-35, the U.S. Navy is trying to keep F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet fighters flying until replacements arrive. According to Military Times, the service is stretching the lifespan of existing planes, keeping them in the air far longer than originally planned.
The U.S. Navy's F/A-18C Hornets comprise half of the fighter force on a typical Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. These older Hornets, known as "legacy Hornets" to differentiate them from the Super Hornet, were only meant to fly an average 6,000 hours.
Generally speaking, this works out to about 20 years of peacetime flying. The problem? Most of the "legacy Hornets" were bought in the 1980s, making them roughly 30 years old. The period from 1991 to 2015 also have seen a higher operating tempo than expected, with an nearly continuous stream of wars, peacekeeping missions, no-fly zones, and punitive actions requiring air power.
The Navy plans to replace legacy Hornets with the carrier version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—a process that should have started three years ago. The Navy was originally supposed to declare the F-35C ready for combat in 2012.
Unfortunately, the F-35 is running the better part of a decade behind schedule, and Initial Operating Capability, as the combat ready status is known, has been pushed that back to 2018 or even 2019.
Now, the last of the legacy Hornets is expected to be retired in 2022, and even that date could be pushed back by delays in the F-35 program (and government funding) staying on track.
As a result, the Navy is planning on extending the service lives of legacy Hornets to 10,000 hours. Although build for 6,000 hours, the airframes have been tested out to 10,000. Beyond that, safety becomes a real issue.
The other half of a carrier's fighter force are the newer F/A-18E/F Super Hornets. Super Hornets were also originally rated for 6,000 flying hours and will also be increased to 10,000 hours. The Super Hornet will not be replaced by the F-35 but rather so-called "sixth generation" fighter, the F/A-XX future fighter, to differentiate it from the 5th generation F-35. That won't happen until the 2040s, but the Super Hornets are already being flown longer and harder as older Hornets spend more time in repair depots.
In short, the Navy is counting on the Hornet to hold out longer than it was originally expected to, thanks mainly to the F-35's very, very slow development.
Damn.That sucks.We are caught short.
The 35 is the second coming of the same idiocy that brought us the TFX project that resulted in the F-111 - a fighter that couldn’t dogfight and was the size of a medium airliner.
Wow.The P36 did get the first kill at Pearl Harbor but was soon eclipsed.I guess I’m lost way,way back.
I take that back. What we have is:
A lot of upgunned P-36s. Old, but upgunned.
A very few P-47s. We destroyed the tooling for those.
The XP-58 is being delivered slowly.
And a whole bunch of rainbow flags.
LOL, at first I thought your post read rainbow fags.The best to you in 16 and beyond.
Bring back the F-14!!
Can’t do that either. Tooling’s been destroyed. So have all the spare parts.
Also worth remembering the fourteen pilots who managed to get airborne while under fire at Pearl Harbor. On a day when nobody would have blamed them for staying under cover or fighting from the ground, they ran then flew to the sound of the guns.
http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/the-few-who-got-up/
http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/pearl-harbor-the-army-air-forces-fight-back/
Thanks.
Yes indeed.
The P-40 was effective because guys like Claire Chennault figured out how to use its strengths against other planes weaknesses.
There were far better fighters later, but they were what was there at the time.
What was that Pug guy flying? Was it a P-40?
“Damn good thing this didn’t happen in the run up to world war 2.(in some limited cases it did)A decade behind? That’s unreal.”
Actually, I think the Navy was caught at least a generation behind by the Zero and other Japanese long range planes. We caught up fast, but at that time America had something like 35% of the world’s industrial capacity and a huge, skilled workforce. Today we produce software and five dollar coffee. The workforce either can’t, won’t or lives nicely on welfare. We aren’t the same country we were and the technology is leaping ahead. We won’t be beaten on quantity, but we may end up ceding local areas like those around China simply because the cost of taking or defending them will be too much for the public to bear.
The world will be a darker, more dangerous place because America has slipped from its preeminent status.
I guess that’s why they gave them to the Marines. Improvising to get it to work.
I don’t get why anyone in their right mind would destroy tools and equipment to make advanced machines of anything.
The only reason I could see is if enemy takeover was unavoidable.
or, they could retire two carriers and apportion the planes to the carriers remaining in service
“Faced with delays in the adoption of the F-35” Not delays with the aircraft but with Congress because they didn’t want to approve a replacement aircraft when asked by USN/USMC and that caused the delay in the program. Now everyone is trying to play catch up.
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