The Navy promotes the Super Hornet as an aircraft able to best any fighter it might encounter on tomorrow’s battlefields. Making the airplane any stealthier would have forced the Navy to put the Hornet through a costly and unacceptably lengthy redesign, and the Navy decided against it. Super Hornet will still carry weapons externally, a practice that greatly magnifies the aircraft’s signature. Nothing at all has been done to reduce the airplane’s considerable infrared signature or its radar signature from the side or rear. However, the new inlets do not mask the fighter’s engine fan blades, a big reflector of radar energy. Canopy coatings, special materials and treatment for leading edges, and an F-22–style engine air intake have all helped produce a modest reduction in the Super Hornet’s frontal radar cross section. Nevertheless, the Navy has sought to buy as much stealthiness as possible for the Super Hornet. The Navy says that part of the reason it needs a larger version of the F/A-18 is to get the additional room it needs for systems that carry out defensive electronic countermeasures-jamming-as well as the attendant power and cooling requirements such systems require. It argues that the new fighter has a “balanced” design that doesn’t rely on stealth because stealth is “perishable.” By that, the Navy means that aeronautic engineers eventually will come up with a countermeasure that will negate the LO advantage. The service has published numerous brochures, white papers, and analyses promoting the Super Hornet-the single-seat version is called the F/A-18E and the two-seat version the F/A-18F. The Navy is well aware of the Super Hornet’s limitations, but it has built a new carrier strategy around it, insisting that the “state of the art” in modern combat aircraft design-that is, stealth-isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. That Hornet model, in the words of the Navy’s top aviator, is “maxed out.” The revisions that it offers can be itemized: an extra weapon station on each wing, room for more fuel, somewhat more range, and more room for improvement than can be found in the current F/A-18C/D version. Moreover it offers no advantage in speed, turning, or acceleration over today’s standard Hornet. No one-certainly not the Navy-considers the Super Hornet to be a low-observable, or “stealthy,” fighter it has only a small degree of bolt-on stealthiness. However, the new Super Hornet is a compromise design, shaped to a large extent by budget pressures, major missteps in other earlier fighter programs, and the need to have something ready in time to replace large numbers of carrier-based strike and fleet-defense aircraft that will have to retire in the next decade. A large new model, called Super Hornet, currently is in flight test and is expected to achieve initial operational capability in 2001. Carrier air wings today are made up mostly of F/A-18s, and within a decade only Hornet variants will be flying combat missions from America’s flattops. The F/A-18 Hornet is the new centerpiece of naval aviation.
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