[yarddog]

The super hornet seems to be to the hornet about what the hellcat was to the wildcat.

[FreedomPoster]

That’s a pretty good analogy.

[Bonemaker]

I would rather see Hellcats, Corsairs, Bearcats etc myself.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The super hornet seems to be to the hornet about what the hellcat was to the wildcat.

At least the Hellcat was given a different designation than the Wildcat. The “super hornet” is a different plane than the hornet. The wings are different, the fuselage is different, the engines are different, it was designed with more demanding performance criteria than the hornet and had to be a bigger plane.

But it was also designed with the political constraint that it had to look just like the hornet. And be designated with the same model number, F-18. Because that was the only way to keep the gigabucks of development cost of the entirely new plane off the radar. The government saved so much money by replacing the F-14 with the lightweight F-17 F-18 F-18E/F . . .

</sarcasm>