Jane's Advanced Strike Fighters

[FOZ_1983]

Originally Posted by Robotic Pope

The Hurricane in Birds of steel hates you now you've said that

Shame we have to fly the POS Super Hornet. Horrible plane. I will enjoy the Su35 and the two tank busters though.

When BoS comes out then that will be taking up alot of my time and i'll love every min (providing the hard drive doesnt break ) so the Hurri will be given its fair share of attention :d can't wait to shoot down some zero's in it haha.

If it were in Battlefield 3 then i would be all over it, i'd be dogfighting with them jets and ground pounding with the A-10's and showing them how a real plane does it haha.

Trk - The A-10's are in Battlefield 3, or so the Battlefield 3 wiki thing says. Along with some Russian equivelant and a few different choppers

[Robotic Pope]

Originally Posted by flynlion

Why so much hate for the FA-18 Pope? I got a buddy who flies 'em for the USMC and he loves it

I'm an F14 fan . The original legacy Hornet is a fine fighter. The Super Hornet on the other hand is an abomination and should never have been chosen over the Super Tomcat 21. The Navy tricked the govement into thinking it was just an upgrade of the Hornet and not a completly different aircraft. As it wasn't seen as a new aircraft it didn't have to go through the prototype testing stage, because of this it has many flaws.
The Super Tomcat 21 would have been cheaper and would have capabilities far in advance of the Super Hornet.
I bet your friend would have loved more to fly the Tomcat still.

SuperTomcat 21 http://www.topedge.com/alley/text/other/tomcat21.htm

Here is the full Super Hornet story from another US marine.

"By JAY A. STOUT
The Virginian-Pilot,
December 15, 1999

I am a fighter pilot. I love fighter aircraft. But even though my service --I am a Marine-- doesn't have a dog in the fight, it is difficult to watch the grotesquerie that is the procurement of the Navy's new strike-fighter, the F/A-18 E/F Su per Hornet.

Billed as the Navy's strike-fighter of the future, the F/A-18 E/F is instead an expensive failure - a travesty of subterfuge and poor leadership. Intended to over come any potential adversaries during the next 20 years, the air craft is instead outperformed by a number of already operational air craft - including the fighter it is scheduled to replace, the original F/A-18 Hornet.

The Super Hornet concept was spawned in 1992, in part, as a re placement for the 30 year-old A-6 Intruder medium bomber. Though it had provided yeoman service since the early 1960s, the A-6 was aging and on its way to retirement by the end of the Gulf War in 1991. The Navy earlier tried to develop a replacement during the 1980s - the A-12 - but bungled the project so badly that the whole mess was scrapped in 1991. The A-12 fiasco cost the taxpayers $5 billion and cost the Navy what little reputation it had as a service that could wisely spend taxpayer dollars.

Nevertheless, the requirement for an A-6 replacement remains. Without an aircraft with a longer range and greater payload than the current F/A-18, the Navy lost much of its offensive punch. Consequently it turned to the original F/A-18 - a combat-proven per former, but a short-ranged light bomber when compared to the A-6. Still stinging from the A-12 debacle, the Navy tried to "put one over" on Congress by passing off a completely redesigned aircraft - the Super Hornet - as simply a modification of the original Hornet.

The obfuscation worked. Many in Congress were fooled into believing that the new aircraft was just what the Navy told them it was - a modified Hornet. In fact, the new airplane is much larger - built that way to carry more fuel and bombs - is much different aerodynamically, has new engines and engine intakes and a completely reworked internal structure. In short, the Super Hornet and the original Hornet are two completely different aircraft despite their similar appearance.

Though the deception worked, the new aircraft - the Super Hornet - does not. Because it was never prototyped - at the Navy's insistence - its faults were not evident until production aircraft rolled out of the factory. Among the problems the aircraft experienced was the publicized phenomenon of "wing drop" - a spurious, uncommanded roll, which occurred in the heart of the air craft's performance envelope. After a great deal of negative press, the Super Hornet team devised a "band-aid" fix that mitigated the problem at the expense of performance tradeoffs in other regimes of flight. Regardless, the redesigned wing is a mish-mash of aerodynamic compromises which does nothing well. And the Super Hornet's wing drop problem is minor compared to other shortfalls. First, the air craft is slow -- slower than most fighters fielded since the early 1960s. In that one of the most oft- uttered maxims of the fighter pilot fraternity is that "Speed is Life", this deficiency is alarming.

But the Super Hornet's wheezing performance against the speed clock isn't its only flaw. If speed is indeed life, than maneuverability is the reason that life is worth living for the fighter pilot. In a dog fight, superior maneuverability al lows a pilot to bring his weapons to bear against the enemy. With its heavy, aerodynamically compromised airframe, and inadequate engines, the Super Hornet won't win many dogfights. Indeed, it can be outmaneuvered by nearly every front-line fighter fielded today.

"But the Super Hornet isn't just a fighter", its proponents will counter, "it is a bomber as well". True, the new aircraft carries more bombs than the current F/A-18 - but not dramatically more, or dramatically further. The engineering can be studied, but the laws of physics don't change for anyone - certainly not the Navy. From the beginning, the aircraft was incapable of doing what the Navy wanted. And they knew it.

The Navy doesn't appear to be worried about the performance shortfalls of the Super Hornet. The aircraft is supposed to be so full of technological wizardry that the enemy will be overwhelmed by its superior weapons. That is the same argument that was used prior to the Vietnam War. This logic fell flat when our large, ex pensive fighters - the most sophisticated in the world - started falling to peasants flying simple aircraft designed during the Korean conflict.

Further drawing into question the Navy's position that flight performance is secondary to the technological sophistication of the air craft, are the Air Forces' specifications for its new - albeit expensive - fighter, the F-22. The Air Force has ensured that the F-22 has top-notch flight performance, as well as a weapons suite second to none. It truly has no ri vals in the foreseeable future.

The Super Hornet's shortcomings have been borne out anecdotally. There are numerous stories, but one episode sums it up nicely. Said one crew member who flew a standard Hornet alongside new Super Hornets: "We outran them, we out-flew them, and we ran them out of gas. I was embarrassed for those pilots". These shortcomings are tacitly acknowledged around the fleet where the aircraft is referred to as the "Super-Slow Hornet".

What about the rank-and-file Navy fliers? What are they told when they question the Super Hornet's shortcomings? The standard reply is, "Climb aboard, sit down, and shut up. This is our fighter, and you're going to make it work". Can there be any wondering at the widespread disgust with the Navy's leadership and the hemorrhaging exodus of its fliers?

Unfortunately, much of the damage has been done. Billions of dollars have been spent on the Super Hornet that could have been spent on maintaining or upgrading the Navy's current fleet of aircraft. Instead, unacceptable numbers or aircraft are sidelined for want of money to buy spare parts. Paradoxically, much of what the Navy wanted in the Super Hornet could have been obtained, at a fraction of the cost, by upgrading the cur rent aircraft - what the Navy said it was going to do at the beginning of this mess.

Our military's aircraft acquisition program cannot afford all the proposed acquisitions. Some hard decisions will have to be made. The Super Hornet decision, at a savings of billions of dollars, should be an easy one".

[FOZ_1983]

Pope,

I to prefer the F14, and would be all over it like a fly to shit if it were in battlefield 3... but it simply isnt. Hence why i said F18 simply because its its in the game haha.

If it had been battlefield 3 1940 then i would of said "spitfire" had it been their. All knowing i prefer the hurricane.

I just make do with what im offered

Have to agree though.. AWAY FROM THE CONSOLE F18, the super hornet does seem to have its short coming.

What is more worrying though is that the F35 is costing a pretty penny, and were making huge cut backs and savings over here. Were thinking of just scrapping the F35 and saving money by going with the F18 Super Hornet ourselves....

[Robotic Pope]

Actually the latest thing I heard is the MOD are seriously looking into the Sea Grippen that Saab are developing right here in the UK. The Grippen has short take off capability so the carrier could keep the ski jump design without an expensive catapult system. The Grippen's a great little plane, I think this is a good backup plan. Saab/Bae Sea Griffin FGR.1 FTW

[flynlion]

Interesting read on the Super Hornet Pope. I knew that it was over weight and over budget, but I thought they had fixed the other problems by spending lotsa money FWIW I think my buddy was on the C model when I last talked to him about it. But even though the "Super" Hornet has its problems, I don't think the solution would be another upgrade to the F-14. The Tomcat is big and complicated, requires a lot of maintenance, uses a LOT of fuel, is very un-stealthy and takes up a lot of deck space on the ship. It is however, extremely bad-assed

[Robotic Pope]

Here's a fun F-14 'what if' forum thread. http://www.phpbbplanet.com/shipyard/...forum=shipyard
(This is what Ace combat znd JASF should do instead of just throwing in the old retired F14D each new game)

The Russians have shown with the Su27 that if you have a great basic aircraft you can modify it in many different ways to suit different roles and keep it at the cutting edge of fighter design. A completely new aircraft design isn't always needed. The F-14 wasn't stealthy but would have been modified to make it less observable on radar.

The same thing happened to the Blackburn Buccaneer and it's replacement Panavia Tornado. In many ways the Buccaneer was the better aircraft.

[flynlion]

I hear ya Pope, but it's easy to speculate about how good a "what if" airplane would have been because they never built it. Who's to say this "Super" Tomcat would have been any better or cheaper than the "Super" Hornet? Sure it might have been, it also could have been a lot worse LoL.

I do love the Buccaneer. Back when I was a current CFI I helped an RAF Buccaneer pilot get his US license. I loved flying with that guy! Pure fun, even in a little single engine Cessna you could tell he was a combat pilot.

[Robotic Pope]

Originally Posted by flynlion

I hear ya Pope, but it's easy to speculate about how good a "what if" airplane would have been because they never built it. Who's to say this "Super" Tomcat would have been any better or cheaper than the "Super" Hornet? Sure it might have been, it also could have been a lot worse LoL.

I do love the Buccaneer. Back when I was a current CFI I helped an RAF Buccaneer pilot get his US license. I loved flying with that guy! Pure fun, even in a little single engine Cessna you could tell he was a combat pilot.

Yes that is true. Although because it was not a new aircraft design its pretty certain that its performance would be no worse than the F14D which outperformed the f18e/f super hornet. Give the f14D all the gizmos from the Super Hornet plus the conformal FAST pack fuel tanks that were planed and you have an incredably long range strike aircraft. It would have been ideal for Australia too as a F111 replacement where the super hornet is failing because of lack of range. It would also be very unlikely for an update of a current plane to become more costly than designing a completely new one.

I love the Buccaneer too. I often think about 'what if the Tornado never was' updated Buccaneers with all the modern tech and stealth features added (it even already had the intenal weapons bay ) . I'm certain that it would be the best low altitude strike aircraft on the planet