Superhornet production is basically over for USN, therefore most of the contracted 590 or so superhornets must already be in service with USN. Around 500ish, alongside f18g?
Yet there seems to be over 400 more legacy hornets in service for a total of some 900 or so f18a-f (without g models). That is for 10 to 11 carriers. Out of which no more than 8 or so would ever really get deployed at once. So basically 112 fighters per carrier. Even if we take some 75% availability figures for the planes, that’s still 84 ready to deploy fighters per deployed carrier. Are all these numbers more or less correct or is the number of active hornets/superhornets smaller? Almost 80% more fighters ready per ready carrier than each carrier would realistically carry?
Does USN plan to rotate the planes from/to carriers during deployments so they always have freshly maintained planes? Even so, there’s way too many planes left. Does USN worry it might lose a third of its fighter fleet in combat ops? Or does USN plan to regularly use its planes from ground bases as well, redeployed near the areas that need them?
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June 22, 2014 at 12:45 pm