The F/A-18 Super Hornet Fighter Has One Last Conflict to Tend To Before Retirement
Next-generation infrared target tracking, conformal fuel tanks, a fully redesigned digital cockpit, and new glide slope carrier-landing software are just a few of the many life-extending enhancements woven into the U.S. Navy’s classic F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet.
The Navy’s F/A-18 has already outlived its anticipated service life through extension programs, upgrades, and extensive modernization, ensuring the 1980s-launched jet remains relevant, lethal, and cutting-edge in a modern threat environment.
Super Hornet Navy Fighter. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
This challenging threat environment is quite evident in Iran, so it is not without a measure of irony that the airplane may now be fighting in its last conflict.
For many years, the Pentagon has been planning to sunset the F/A-18, to become a cherished memory for posterity.
Yet the jet has consistently outperformed expectations, flying years beyond its anticipated lifespan. Therefore, as surprising as it may sound, it does seem conceivable that the F/A-18 will fly in yet another war someday.
1970s F/A-18
While the original McDonnell Douglas-Northrop airframe dates back to the mid-1970s, today’s F/A-18 is virtually a new aircraft due to the scope of its technological enhancements.
In recent years, the aircraft has been the focus of an extensive Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) designed to upgrade and reinforce the airframes, onboard electronics, and engine performance. Specifically, Navy and industry engineers modified the center barrel section to reinforce the airframe.
The impact of this SLEP has been substantial, extending the F/A-18’s flight hours from 6,000 to 10,000 over many years.
Simply put, this has added many years to the F/A-18’s relevance, performance, and continued operational functionality.
This functionality has been and continues to be critical to the Navy as it fast-tracks the arrival of its 6th-generation F/A-XX.
F/A-XX Boeing Image.
The SLEP program, which now spans nearly 10 years, was intended to ensure the Carrier Air Wing remained sufficiently lethal during a period when fleet size was reduced by the retirement of the F-14 Tomcat and the delayed arrival of the F-35Cs.
Never Enough F/A-18s
Going back to 2014, or even earlier, the Navy has been requesting additional F/A-18s and regularly placing them on the service’s unfunded priorities list.
All this considered, there is also widespread recognition that there are limits to exactly how much a 1970s and 1980s-era airframe can ultimately be extended and upgraded.
Perhaps most of all, the F/A-18 is not stealthy, meaning its edges, shapes, and external configuration make it extremely difficult to hide from modern air defenses.
Quasi-Stealthy F/A-18?
Nonetheless, the U.S. Navy has, in recent years, added radar-signature-reducing, curved, conformal fuel tanks and experimented with rounded external weapons pods to add some measure of “stealth-like” attributes to the aircraft.
While these initiatives would seem to lower the radar signature or cross-section of the aircraft by smoothing over some of the sharp edges or contours likely to generate a return signal and creating a slightly more horizontal blended wing-body type of structure, Navy developers certainly understood these adaptations would not likely qualify the F/A-18 as sufficiently “stealthy” to evade modern air defenses.
Block III F/A-18 Super Hornet.
The F/A-18 also received enhanced digital radios and infrared search and track (IRST) targeting technologies designed to improve threat tracking and to operate in an electronic warfare (EW) environment.
Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing Systems enable a wider, higher-resolution field of view for pilots. Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) on the F/A-18 has also been enhanced, and, perhaps of greatest technological complexity, the F/A-18s have received a specially developed software application called “magic carpet”.
This was designed to assist pilots with a smooth landing and a successful glide slope as they bank and align for what can often be challenging carrier landings at sea.
About the Author: Kris Osborn
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
