USS Phoenix CL-46!

So, Light Cruisers are now “Capital Ships”?

Maybe to the current RN, but in the USN in WW2, only BBs and CVs were so considered (but how did the Argies see their CLs in 1982?)!

Well, if the RAF needs a boom tanker, they could always borrow one of Italy’s 4 KC767s (1 available, and 3 more under modification in Italy), or if the mission is in the Pacific area one of Japan’s 4 KC-767s (first 1 undergoing flight testing)… all of which are equipped with a boom (Italy’s also have under-wing H&D pods) for the Japanese F-15s (& maybe F-2?) and the Italian F-16s.

Well, most of those US BBs were only “sunk” once… except for Nevada & Oklahoma (sister ships, appropriately enough).
Nevada was the only one to get under weigh Dec. 7th, but had to be beached as she was settling and would block the harbor mouth if she sank mid-channel. She was repaired & served in both ocean theatres… meeting her end in the post-war A-bomb tests.
Oklahoma rolled over & settled on the bottom Dec. 7th, and was raised (and righted) during 1943 so she could be scrapped. She sank May 1947 while in tow to the US west coast.

The only other Pearl Harbor BB to be sunk was Pennsylvania… also in the A-bomb tests, but she had been in drydock on Dec. 7th, and so was not sunk then.

All other “sunk at PH” BBs were scrapped after the war.

SOC, that “last minute air wing” was a long-planned training exercise… which was over in less than a month… and the LAST F-14 squadron will be retired at the end of the training exercise.

The USN’s PR department simply screwed up when planning ceremonies, gifting of display aircraft, etc.

F-14 delay all about war games, not war

By LAURENT L.N. BONCZIJK
Of the News-Register

The F-14D Super Tomcat loan program has been put on temporary hold, but not because the aircraft carrier serving as home base for the Navy’s final active squadron is headed for standby duty in the Middle East as reported Tuesday.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt, Navy sources confirmed Wednesday, is actually headed out to sea to engage in a series of long-planned multi-national war games with the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and an array of other Navy vessels.

The erroneous report came from the Evergreen Aviation Museum, which is eagerly awaiting a Tomcat, the jet fighter made famous by Tom Cruise in the movie “Top Gun,” under permanent loan from the National Museum of Naval Aviation.

Nicole Wahlberg, the museum’s director of marketing and public relations, said, “I am very sorry for the false information.” She said museum officials did not realize it was a second-hand account when they put it out.

Contacted Wednesday, Helen Watson, loan manager for the Museum of Naval Aviation, confirmed, “All F-14 flight deliveries have been put on hold.” She declined to say why.

However, Cmdr. Chris Sims, public affairs officer with the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, said it was definitely not a new call to duty. While some Navy vessels have reportedly been dispatched in response to the recent eruption of combat in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, he said the Roosevelt was not among them.

Sims said the Roosevelt would be participating in Operation Bold Step off the East Coast. He said the exercise, slated to run July 21 to 31, involves 16,000 military personnel from five nations.

The Navy has been gradually swapping out the F-14D in favor of F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornets.

The Roosevelt’s VF-31 squadron is the only one still left flying Tomcats. He said it will be getting Hornets after completion of the current exercise.

The F-14D last saw combat on Feb. 8, when a pair from the Roosevelt engaged in a bombing run in Iraq. The carrier landings currently being conducted will probably be the last for the craft.

Katherine Huit, director of collections at Evergreen, said the museum signed its loan agreement with the National Museum of Naval Aviation on June 23.

Evergreen was expecting to take delivery Tuesday in Portland. Plans seemed firm enough that a team of aircraft mechanics flew out to dismantle the Tomcat for trucking south to McMinnville, a process that was expected to take about two weeks.

It was not clear when, how or why those plans got scotched. Nor was it clear how the reported last-minute change of plans squares with the Roosevelt’s longstanding commitment to participate in the war games exercise with its VF-31 squadron on board.

However, museum officials have been assured the loan remains in the works. It’s just going to take a little longer to take delivery than they had initially hoped.

So, by now the “last-minute air wing” has returned to their stateside bases, and VF-31 is standing down its F-14s… never to return!

“A mediocre air-to-air on the catapult is better than a great one on paper or the budgetary chopping block, which is just where a naval F-22A equivalent would end up.”

That already happened, now didn’t it??? NATF, F-22N, etc.

Yep, I’m sure!

That is something that has been being done since shortly after the F-18 entered service in the early 1980s.

While I was primarily dealing with A-6Es during my 1981-1989 stint as a USMC avionics tech, I was also working with MCAS El Toro’s 3 combat F-18 squadrons (VMFA-314, 323, & 531) and its training F-18 squadron (VMFAT-101) in 1988 & 1989, and they had used that capability in their training by that time as well.

There have been several articles about that technique published in the last 5+ years, and it has been described by high-level NASWC personnel on several documentaries.

While the F-16 is a “fly-by-wire” jet, with the pilot’s controls sending signals to the flight computer, which makes minor adjustments and then sends signals to the motors at the control surfaces… the F-18 takes this a step further, and runs the pilot’s inputs through a computer program which “thinks” about what the pilot wants, considers all of the inputs from the instruments and sensors located all over the aircraft (such as airflow sensors on the wing and fuselage surfaces that detect disturbed or lost airflow), and then operates the control surfaces to do what it knows is possible and aerodynamically safe.

All that is necessary to alter how the F-18 flies is to up-load a new set of “limiting parameters” into the flight computer, and the aircraft will fly differently. This cannot increase performance, since the laws of physics and aerodynamics still work, but it can and does reduce aspects of the Hornet’s performance to better simulate other aircraft.

While this can be done by the pilot, forcing him/her to add “fly like a MIG-XX” onto all of the other things that must be thought about and done, while flying at high speeds and very close range to other aircraft doing the same thing is a very bad idea!

I will post a story of what can happen in training “combat” in a new thread.

Why? As of right now, the Rafale has a limited strike capability, despite its excellent fighter capabilities. While this is supposed to be fixed in the future, it is not a real “multi-role” aircraft at this time, but a fighter with a very secondary attack capability.

What is the payload (in weight) of the Su-33 when operating from Adm. Kuznetsov? Anything close to the Super Hornet’s? And what is its range then as well?

While I do not doubt that the Naval Flanker would do better than the F-18E/F if both were flown from the Kuz’s ski-jump, the catapults on the USN’s CVN/CVs allows a greater max TO weight than the ski-jump would.

Equip the Kuz with waist catapults, and I would agree with the Su-33, but they are not installed now, so…

Could you point us to an actual, Boeing/DOD-related site that confirms this?

Or any reliable, respected source?

The only place I have ever heard of this variant being still viable is a couple of posts on discussion threads, which never include anything to substantiate their rumor.

The USN & USMC use the F-18 (in addition to other aircraft) as an aggressor at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center (NSAWC) at NAS Fallon, Nevada.

The key advantage the Hornet has over other aircraft is its ability for the flight computer to be programmed to duplicate the flight characteristics of other aircraft… insuring that the aggressor pilots cannot perform maneuvers that the aircraft they are simulating cannot.

Of course, sometimes they run into a situation where the Hornet cannot perform a maneuver that the enemy aircraft could… in which case they just “declare the enemy aircraft (or pilot) to be defective”…. [NOT defecting, defective}