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The Navy and the rest of the world caught the first glimpse of the Navy's tactical fighter program last week when the newest version of the Navy's F/A-18 (called the F/A-18E/F) was unveiled at McDonnell Douglas' St. Louis facility. The aircraft, dubbed the "Super Hornet" by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jeremy Boorda, will now undergo a three-year flight test program at the Navy's aircraft test facility at Patuxent River, MD.
Under the flight test plan, the industry team, lead by McDonnell Douglas, will provide seven flying test aircraft, five single-seat E models and two double-seat F models. Three other aircraft will be built and used as ground test aircraft at the company's St. Louis facility.
The flight test program starts January 1996, but will be prefaced by a series of low- and high-speed taxi tests of the E-1, the first aircraft, in November, according to a McDonnell Douglas release.
Although the test program will begin in earnest next year, the company will have to fly two aircraft by the end of this year, as mandated by Congress, before it can receive additional funding. "We have two airplanes flying in this calendar year," Michael Sears, the vice president and general manager of the F/A-18 Hornet program, said. "That will become the basis for the early operational assessment which will then make it [to] a DAB [defense acquisition board] and start us down the production channel with the long-lead funding for the first production set of airplanes."
In June 1992, the Navy awarded McDonnell Douglas a $3.1 billion (fiscal year 1990), 7.5-year engineering and manufacturing development contract that included the 10 test aircraft. The service plans to build a total of 1000 "Super Hornets" through 2015 at a cost of $89 billion. A McDonnell Douglas official said the Navy has priced the buy at $36.4 million per aircraft in fiscal year 1990 dollars. The aircraft is expected to see operational service with the Navy in 2001.
Although critics within Congress and the Pentagon call the aircraft a new developmental program, the "Super Hornet" is defined by the Navy as an upgrade to its existing F/A-18A/B/C/D fleet. It is larger, with more space for fuel, a shortcoming of existing Hornets, and more weapons than the Navy's current C/Ds. It will also sport a more powerful engine, carrying two General Electric F414 engines instead of two GE F404-GE402 as the current Hornets now carry.
Company officials said the "Super Hornet" has a radar cross section smaller than the existing Hornets, capitalizing on a number of low observable technologies. A company official allusively noted that, even though the "Super Hornet" is larger than the Hornet, the improvement in the E/F's cross section from the C/D's is as remarkable as the C/D's improvement from the A/B's. (CHARTS THAT ACCOMPANIED THIS STORY COULD NOT BE TRANSMITTED ELECTRONICALLY. FOR A COPY, PLEASE CALL RAJEANA JENSEN AT 310-616-3333.)