FARNBOROUGH, England — Remember Boeing’s pitch about all the high-speed new refinements and capabilities it wants to add to its F/A-18E and F Super Hornets? It has talked about more efficient engines, conformal fuel tanks and even fighters launching their own unmanned aerial vehicles.
The world’s biggest operator of Super Hornets, the U.S. Navy, isn’t quite ready to sign up for all that stuff — yet.
The Navy’s Super Hornet program manager, Capt. Frank Morley, a career Hornet driver and true believer, said at the air show here Monday that the Navy has not signed up for any of Boeing’s next-gen improvements to its Es and Fs. But he phrased his answer to a reporter’s question in a very specific way:
“The U.S. Navy has not committed to any of those yet from a domestic standpoint,” he said. Morley said Boeing had focused so far on advertising its potential Super-Duper Hornet — our phrase, not his — on international customers, but he acknowledged that he has liked what he’s heard.
“We’ll see where things go,” he said. “They’re all enticing in some way.”
Although the Navy is a (reluctant) member of Club F-35, Morley’s presentation reinforced just how much, and for how long, it will continue to depend on the Superbug. The service is going to extend the lives of some of its A and C model Hornets to 10,000 hours, and one of his charts said the Navy would continue to fly some variety of Super Hornets and E/A-18G Growlers until 2040. Another one of his PowerPoint slides, under the heading “Airborne Networking,” included the bullet point: “UAV connectivity.”
So even though the Navy will pass on the Super-Duper today, it may not be long before it begins upgrading its fleet with some of the bells, whistles and toys Boeing keeps dreaming up.
{ 80 comments… read them below or add one }
Strange to see current fighter will fly way till the 2040s and beyond let the classics live.
& yet the B52 will still probably fly on
F/A-18 is a classic. B-52 is an antique. Both are still useful with the advances.
"and one of his charts said the Navy would continue to fly some variety of Super Hornets and E/A-18G Growlers until 2040"
Recently, the USN was planning on buying 20+ SH in 2012 and 20+ SH in 2013. Those aircraft will not see thirty years in service by 2040, "time keeps flying by! :)"
the US Navy has been slow to upgrade the tactical fleet. The F-14A served for years before the F-14B and F-14D were developed. The F-18C/D are now very old too.
I don't think the Navy is going to bother spending too much on the legacy Hornets. The Supers are in the bank and JSF is supposed to come in soon, so…
Legacy Hornet will be out the door, then it'll be JSF-C and Super Hornet on the flight deck.
Add in a UAV to the mix.
For SEAD operations JSF teamed with UAV(s).
For normal ops F-18 with UAV(s).
This would reduce the need for JSF on carriers considerably.
Amphibs would still need JSF.
It'd be hard to imagine a single-seat JSF trying to operate…everything, all at once.
The naval UAVs are much more autonomous then predators for example. As I understand it they will land on a carrier deck unaided by man.
Given that, the JSF can give higher level commands and not have to engage in "flying" the UAV. Think of the JSF pilot as a chess player command his pieces, selecting targets for the UAVs. It's possible the JSF will not even engage the enemy and it's weapons will be for defense only.
JSF cant do sead it has no anti-radiation missile
AAGRM is planned for integration on the F-35. Also, Raytheon's T3 will have an anti-radiation mode, although that is more of a technology demonstrator.
No HARM capability? Externally of course?
They forgot to add the decreased radar signature in the way of stealth redesign and coatings.
More hypoxia for everyone?
There's also careful tuning of the exhaust to minimize IR signature: otherwise anyone with an IRST will see you just fine.
Updating the Super Hornets is a good idea.
Updating the hornets A-C is just throwing good money after bad….
Nice discussions everyone :-)
as in all warfare tech, a good offense comes out only to be countered by a good defense only to be countered by a good offense, etc etc.
So in the end we can sum it all of it up this way
-stealth is a weapon of today, not tomorrow
-those will the best electronics (radars, surveillance, IRST, passive and otherwise) will win the day
-along with the best, longest range, fastest and smartest AA weapons (and other missiles) AND the best tactics/skills will win the war.
therefore, as great as stealth is today we need to plan for the "after stealth" phase of warfare
A bit more of this and the USN will have the ammo it needs along with the rest of the services to face stark reality when it comes to the F35.
http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/07/09/f-35-…
Ouch. That was painful to read. $51,143 per flight hour for the F-35A. The Super Hornet is only in the $18,000 per flight hour range. One thing that article didn't mention was that when asked about the cost estimates per flight hour for the F-35C and F-35B, Lockheed Martin simply "couldn't find" them. In other words they refused to release them because they are obscenely higher than the F-35A.
Regardless, such a hedging statement from another navy man. Greenert's comments earlier last week. Publicly the USN and services are supporting the F35 but l would imagine behind the scenes there is a lot of angry back and forth over unit and flight hour costs.
At the end of the day the F35 has too much momentum l would think to be cancelled, but the money does run out at some point. I would expect there will be some sort of truncated buy of all 3 models when it's said and done.
187 of you, 187 of you, 187 of you…we have 3x the number of aircraft that emerged from the Raptor program. Well done, everyone!
Wouldn't it be just so damn sad if Boeing had to fund it's own development of new Hornet capabilities?
They wouldn't get any of that free "profit on development" cash from your tax funds. They might have to actually please the customer by doing more than just meeting the letter of the "requirements", because their customer would be in a position to pass on these "new developments". They might have to make the people who actually use these jets happy with their well thought out work! What a travesty! How could any defense contractor be expected to make money like that, like they were working in a FREE MARKET?
I recently read about how when Kelly Johnson was running the Skunk Works, if a project came in under budget, he would actually give money back to the government, and if he came in over budget, it was his problem and therefore the Skunk Works responsibility.
God bless Mr. Johnson, he could help out in this recession in times of F-35 like stories…if only he was still here.
It would be great if Boeing went and devoloped the FA-XX 6th gen fighter on their own and put a lot of this F35 boondoggle behind us.
Oh hell yes!
The Navy and the Marine Corps need the F-35 as much as the Air Force needs the F-35A if not more. The F-35 is more a replacement to the A-6/A-7/AV-8 then the F-14 or F/A-18. The F-35B/C is limited to 7G's, which does not make for a good fighter. The navy needs an attack aircraft that is better capable of penetrating enemy defenses then anything they have now. The F-35B/C with careful planning will be able to operate independantly of other aircraft like the B-2.
That 7G limitation is not a limitation as long as the F-35's perform to specs, meaning it kills the enemy fighter without having to dog fight. In fact, dog fighting is akin to showing up for a gun fight with a knife.
The Superhornet has a 7.5 G limitation as well.
The Super Hornet actually has a gun and can carry the AIM-9X on wingtip rails. There are plans for wingtip rails on the F-35C, but it's likely that they will not be made for a long time since it would cost a lot more money to further modify production.
The F-35C has already flown with external (inert) AIM-9Xs. They're not on wingtip rails, rather the pylons farthest outboard are for the AIM-9X (and maybe other air-to-air missiles at a later date).
The same reason why the AF won't buy F15K and F15SE.
There’s certainly an argument to be made for upgrading current A/C like the F-18 but they’ll be even easier to detect than newer A/C like the F-35 so any cost advantage per A/C quickly goes away as the number of Hyper Hornets, aircrew, support, etc goes up. The F-35 program is a target-rich environment for critics but the time to cancel passed some time ago. At this point the only bigger waste of money than going forward would be starting over. The fate of future programs and the proper mix of capability deserves serious debate as it appears to be receiving.
If you look at LMs track record [#1 defense contractor ] yrs. late and the 65 mil. plane is now 150 mil. and they havn't worked out anywhere near all the problems,then look at Boeings F18 E/F Hornet record–on time and on cost—who do you want to build your next plane of those 2 companies? I would love to see Boeing develop and market the FA/XX concept plane.
You have apparently forgotten that Boeing went head-to-head with Lockheed, with the result that their vertical landing plane failed to land vertically, and was otherwise a flying pig. Now, however, you think Boeing's "concept" is going to fly as advertised, without cost or schedule overruns. Would you like to buy a bridge?
I just don't think LM has any care about fulfilling their contract–I think all they care about is profit,not quality.
In comparison to the F35C that can't land on a carrier because the tailhook is too short, and to modify that they would have to do extensive modification of the frame–as I said,they are not interested in quality,just profit.If you went to buy a Cadillac for 70,000 and they charged you 210,000 and the car wouldn't run right would you deal with GM again?
Meh, granted this is Lockheed execs. talking, it does not sound like frame work to me. I'm still concered about the lift fan on the B model, no mention of it in the article.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/f-35-pr…
I do think Boeing has a pretty good track record though. F-15K & F-15SG both on time and budget. As Chops said the Super Hornet as well, even with the Aussies, on time, on budget. P-8I is doing well, pretty sure it's on schedule.
The AH-64 Apache block 3 same thing. The Osprey was a black eye though, but hey, that was a joint venture with Bell. Lets not forget about the KC-46 Tanker
we will see how that goes.
The key difference here is that all of the on budget (or close to it) on time deliveries made by Boeing have been derivatives of already flying aircraft. If you have Boeing design a cutting edge airplane from scratch, then you'd be seeing just as many problems and delays as you do from LM on the F-35.
If Boeing started developing the FA/XX right now I would venture a guess it would be operational in @ 10 yrs. If it was, Boeing could realistically take away half of LMs F35 market.IMHO
please buy more…..brain from El segundo
Take your stupid anti-F35 agenda somewhere else. Your spam is incessant.
So if the Navy knows that the F-35C isn't their best option, then why haven't they committed to any upgrades for their Super Hornets? Let me guess, its all a big Lockheed conspiracy…
Yeah, I had to go back and check and, yes he is a Navy Captain (O-6) and career hornet driver. What do you expect him to say! He will never fly a JSF and hopefully he will not command their squadron, if this is his best performance!
Oh, you think Lockheed lies about cost upgrades, but Boeing Boeing Gone tells the truth? Their vertical take off and landing fighter couldn't land vertically without killing it's engine, looked like a pig and flew the same. The F-35 met the requirements, and the men who actually know something about it – that would be the pilots – love it.
I don't have an anti-F-35 agenda. I am only opposed to the F-35C and F-35B. The F-35A still has a chance and I still support it, but that's only if fixing the F-22 fleet turns out to be cheap. Aside from that, I have been saying this for a while and the more the Navy gets outspoken about it the more it only proves that I am right. The Navy knows upgraded Super Hornets (I've heard them called "Hyper Hornets") are better than the F-35C and will provide them with sufficient capability to defeat future threats where as the advantage stealth brings to the table is slowly eroding away with advances in electronics.
What advances in electronics do you speak of? Link?
Maybe if they brought EODAS to F-18 E/F I would support your idea more. That and the F-35's AESA.
F-35B is a do or die for USMC. The Marines are already hard pressed to keep AV-8B's flying. Once they are gone USMC has nothing to fly off Gators for tactical air and CAS. Several other Allied countries that fly Harriers off their Helo carriers are in same boat. I expect JMSDF to be next to move F-35B's to its new Hyuga class helo carriers.
1. Money. 2. Training aircrew on dissimilarly equipped models (see #1.) 3. Currently funding the development of F-35C, N-UCAS, P-8A, E-2D, etc. (see #1.)
Politics. Thats why the F-35 exist. Its a political and jobs project now with our allies.
I know people who have worked on planes in both the airforce and navy. Lots of problems on the F-35 and other than stealth……….little advances over current aircraft.
Exactly as the two previous statements above have stated. It's now a matter of politics rather than what's best for the services.
anything thats real ?
"L Band" radars that detect Stealth aircraft are being built into the Russian SU-35 and PAK-50 aircraft. And China won't be far behind with their "Own L Band Version" stolen Russian tech I'd bet, for their J-20's and J-11's.
Lol….L-Band radar should cancel a program? Really? There is alot more to stealth than just electromagnatism…
Problem is L band has poor resolution so about all it can say is stealth aircraft is that direction.
Not just the "L Band" but the " 55Zh6M Nebo M. It is a multi-band counter-stealth radar" and a few other even more advanced Russian Stealth Detecting Radars. See Link below. About half way down the page and the whole next page.
http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/arti…
The small, limited resolution L-Band arrays on the T-50 probably won't offer any greater detection range than a modern IRST system.
That's the idea. Once you know the general direction a stealth aircraft is then you can focus your more advanced targeting systems and heat seeking sensors in that direction to acquire a lock. The approach the Navy wants to use is to have multiple Super Hornets equipped with good electronics and long range high speed anti-radar missiles so they can be offensive and kill the SAM. This is much better than the passive approach that stealth uses of sneaking around the SAM and leaving it there still a threat.
The Hyper Hornet (I think I'm still going to call it that since I heard some pilots here call it that) has IR sensors that scan about the entire aircraft. They aren't IR cameras like the DAS on the F-35, but the IR sensors do provide spherical scanning about the aircraft just like the F-35. The AESA on the Block II Super Hornet is practically the best thing in the whole active US fighter fleet apart from the one on the F-22. I think it will be fine the way it is. We still don't have missiles that can keep up with APG-79's range and scanning capability.
The F-35B is not the only option. We could still look into making a Harrier III that is shaped for low observability, bigger for more fuel, cheap, rugged, heavily armed, and does the missions the F-35B would be tasked with doing. The F-35B has had many chances and a lot of money to materialize and all have failed to keep the jet from breaking apart in vertical flight or keep the price from going up to $300 million per unit. The F-35B is a no-show and the Marines as well as the Royal Navy should start looking into making a modernized Harrier.
Wow. I did not know about those. The part of that article that surprised me was "a new generation of short-range point defense weapons intended to destroy incoming guided weapons, especially anti-radiation missiles, cruise missiles and guided bombs."
I've got to admit that the Russians are most certainly still on the ball when it comes to making counter strategies to our advanced strategies.
So everyone here is for canceling an entire working flying stealth fighter on the back of a Russian power point presentation? Wow.
If it only was that easy the USSR would have won the Cold War without even breaking a sweat.
And there is money for all this ?
Well – antimissile/mortar/stray seagull* APD weapons are hardly new, and land-based phalanx were experimented with in Iraq and Afghanistan for base defence.
As long as Anti-radiation missiles are a principle tactic for suppressing SAMS, they're a pretty obvious counter and you can pull the AK-630M weapon mount straight off the navy hulls.
* don't ask. It was messy….
But yes. One thing that Russia has historically produced is very good problem solving engineers; they may not have had the money or manufacturing tech but they are extremely good at designing to take this into account and/or making best use of what they have. It's one reason I am far more concerned about the PAK-FA than the J-20. It is not up for debate that the russian design bureau can build world-class dogfighters, which means all they have to do is master the stealth bit.
Because the Russians never exaggerate the capability of their equipment, right?
Cries of "Stealth is dead" were already old by the late '90s. We've been hearing about such systems since then and so far they've been all hype.
It's true that more recent developments will make some methods of RCS reduction less effective. Yet even against ultra-modern radar systems, detection ranges are reduced compared to conventional designs.
Our aircraft won't be relying on stealth alone. Stealth + ECM/EW + decoys + SEAD missions can deal with these threats.
First of all the F-35 is not a "working flying stealth fighter." In fact it doesn't work at all. The carrier version can't trap a wire and the STOVL version can't fly without ripping apart its lift fan. It will cost several BILLION dollars to fix and $400 billion dollars to procure all of them. That's over $100 billion per model. What I have been saying for the past three years and what the CNO is now saying is that it was an extremely arrogant idea to think that our enemies would not have found a way to counter stealth technology in the next 15-20 years. This is the idea on which the F-35 was made and it was a foolish idea. The fact that the Russians are coming out with such systems was just proof that stealth is going to be a very limited advantage in the future. So why not take money away from making stealth jets and put that money towards making better ordinance, better electronics, better jammers, and countermeasures? The Super Hornet is better than the F-35 in every performance area except stealth so why not spend money reducing its radar cross section advancing its avionics, then give it better ordinance? SAMs are getting more and more dangerous so we should focus more on killing them rather than sneaking around them. The F-35 is also REALLY expensive. It's capability is not worth its weight in money. With the economy not doing so well we need to use our defense budget more wisely than we have in recent years.
And how is the super hornet better then the f35c at every performance metric then stealth? Some of the f-35's performance is classified.
How could you know this? Sounds to me like you are just spouting off of the mouth.
I do not agree that the Super Hornet is better in every category, but since so much is classified there is no way to have an intelligent debate on that issue anyway. My contention is that the Super Hornet represents the limit of advancement on the airframe as may be slightly better now but cannot be made more maneuverable or stealthy. Put another way, when the car first came out the horse and buggy was a far better/more efficient system. Additionally, you are judging a very mature airframe against the F 35 in its infancy so I expect to see Son of Black Owl justifying the Super F 35 over the risky new F 47..
I'm talking about things that have already been released about the F-35. The Super Hornet is faster, more reliable, more heavily armed, more flexible, better suited for CAS, etc…
It's true that a lot of the F-35's capabilities are classified, but it's also possible that the explosion in cost is a result of a very poor and complex design rather than unspoken classified capabilities.
Interesting notion but how long do you think it would take the Corps to find somebody to come up with a working design for a Stealth Harrier, then create a working prototype, run through all of the tests that will be required, then put them into production and start training pilots? By that time the Corps will have retired its last Harriers and will probably have been without an amphib capable plane for several years. Then there's the issue of money, the money already sunk into the F-35 and the money to fund a proposed Stealth Harrier; with a shrinking budget and the Corps' traditionally small budget I really don't think that they can afford a brand new plane program right now.
I don't understand the point of the F-35B. Everything I've read tells me it would be a good – maybe even great – STOVL strike fighter…but why do the Marines need a strike fighter? I would think they'd have a much more urgent need for a real AV-8B-replacement CAS platform. Something that can fly low and slow and lay down a lot of 25mm, rockets, cluster bombs, ATGMs, etc. The 35B has half the cannon ammo of the Harrier and doesn't seem geared towards low and slow anything, or persistent loiter, or lots of ordanance. I could see a few fighter variants to protect the gators, like the Harriers that were made AMRAAM-capable, but I have to agree that some sort of "Harrier 3" (or, in my dreams, a revived OV-10!) would be better suited for USMC CAS needs. But that's just the musings of a former ground pounder…
The Super Hornet program proved that making an upgraded redesign of a proven airframe is like making a jet with half of the R&D and half of the airframe testing already done for you. The Super Hornet was first funded in1992 and the first prototype went through testing quickly in1995-1998 with the first one entering service in 1999. Keep in mind that the F-35 is expected to reach IOC in 2019 (and the B-model might be much later than that). If we started development of a Stealthy Harrier right now then I'm sure we could get it to IOC before the F-35B with good program management.
The Marines have avoided buying Super Hornets to save enough money to buy the F-35B. However, the F-35B will cost over $100 billion dollars to procure. I don't think the USMC has enough money for the F-35B at all. The British might not either. That's why I think that the USMC should team up with the British and the Italians to make this new Harrier since they were the only ones interested in buying the F-35B. They could share costs and design it to their needs and specifications. In the mean time the Marines should stick to their original plan of avoiding Super Hornet buys and pushing their current Harrier fleet to new limits of operation so they will have enough money to design and buy the Stealthy Harrier.
Wonder how much they could get a new Harrier going with the Rolls Royce LiftSystem plus the engine of their choice…
The US and UK both thought making a Harrier III reach supersonic speeds was very possible in the 1990's. I bet those prospects look even better now.
I'm pretty certain every examination of doing that has been deemed infeasible. The closest you could get to a working supersonic Harrier design would be something like the X-32, and the X-32 could barely get off the ground in STOVL mode.
Isn't the heart of the difference between -32 & -35 all in the LiftSystem vs something like the Pegasus, which uses thrust-vectoring?
What's scary is that even using the same engine as the -X35 that the thrust vector system couldn't deliver.
That said, if the LiftSystem is robust, then why not keep it?
We might not necessarily need to make the Harrier III reach supersonic speeds. After all, the Harrier is meant to be an attack aircraft and we might want an engine that focuses on doing more with less and having good fuel economy since it is a VTOL fighter. The only thing that's clear is that we can obviously make improvements in it. Here is a British assessment of improving the Harrier that was made in 2001 before the JSF competition was fully concluded: http://www.harrier.org.uk/history/JSF_HarrierIII….
I'm still wondering why the Marines didn't buy the A-10.
One look at the Marine Corps' Eagle, Globe and Anchor seal would have told you everything you need to know. I'll give you a hint…you need to READ.
I find your inexpert analysis continually galling.