A REAL Hornet?

Originally posted by galm 1
I know that you all answered that on my other thread, but what will happen to the retired jets? Will they be sold to other countries or stored away in Arizona.

As I said earlier, they'll go to AMARC and stay in storage until they're recycled.

Originally posted by thebozeian
Hey Westpoint do you know if the block III will get a new or uprated engine?

GE is working to increase the thrust output of the F414-GE-400 engine by 20-25%, it is one of the upgrade proposals for the Block III. This means the new engine would put out anywhere between 26.4-27.5K of thrust. I did some searching but I could not find any mention of a congressional limit on Super Hornet upgrades. That sounds very unusual and not something that the military would accept quietly...

Originally posted by thebozeian
And if it is getting further stealth improvements it makes you wonder why the navy would even bother with the F-35 at all.

Well even if the Super Hornet gets a more 'stealthy' airframe it still would not be as LO (or have all aspect stealth) as the F-35. Not to mention that the F-35 will have in some respects better avionics and more advanced sensors (along with some other goodies, 5th Gen is not just a catch phrase) with perhaps a greater payload and wepaons capability. It also carries significantly more fuel and has more range (aka endurance). Currently the Navy plans to only acquire a few hundred F-35C's acting primarily in the A2G role while the Rhino will play the role of a fleet superiority fighter. I don't know if I quite agree with that but it's how the Navy views it.

The Rhino? What?

Not familiar with the term.

It's one of the nicknames for the Super Hornet. The crews gave it that nickname to differentiate between the A-D Hornet, and the E/F Super Hornet, because there's really a pretty substantial difference between the two. The Super Hornet is 20% heavier at take off and 30% heavier at landing, so they had to have a way to differentiate between them for the cat/arrestor crews on the carriers.

[edit on 4/13/2007 by Zaphod58]

Thankyou Zaphod.

The F-35 was planned to partially replace the F/A-18 hornets, that was for the few years after 2008. They should slowly replace the F/A-18 hornets slowly. I do think that they should replace a good portion of the fleet with JSF's.

Yes Zaph is right, it's an unofficial nickname for the F/A-18E/F, sort of like Viper, Rodan, Beagle etc... The reason for Rhino and not another name is due to the protrusion found just aft of the radome on the Super Hornet which looks like a Rhino's horn (allegedly). The legacy Hornet does not sport this feature.

Visual (Super Hornet foreground).