Fleet awaiting F-35 and keeping Hornets flying - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Fleet awaiting F-35 and keeping Hornets flying

The Navy must continue to stretch its existing tactical strike fighter fleet until the F-35C Lightning II arrives in 2016, which means giving new life to legacy F/A-18 Hornets.

Those airframes are designed to last 6,000 flight hours, but service extensions will prolong them to around 8,000 or, with more work, as many as 10,000 hours.

“That takes a lot of engineering, a lot of work that goes on. It’s not just a simple, ‘We’ll do this and it’s done,’ ” Vice Adm. David Architzel, commander of Naval Air Systems Command, said at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space Exposition in National Harbor, Md.

The Navy must take a very measured approach toward its 150 legacy Hornets, as well as the newer F/A-18E and F Super Hornet models, he said.

The Super Hornets began a service-life assessment program in 2008, when the oldest E and F airframes had logged as many as 3,800 flight hours; the A through D models were already in a service-life extension program. Until the F-35C arrives, the Navy is hoping that another wave of Super Hornets can sustain operations. In its proposed fiscal 2012 budget, the Navy plans to purchase 67 more Super Hornets by 2016, 41 more airplanes than called for in previous budgets.

In the past year the F-35 program was “deeply assessed” to determine how long and how much it would cost to finish developing the airplane, said Vice Adm. David Venlet, director of the F-35 program.

By early April, the three F-35 variants had accrued a little more than 1,000 hours of test flight — only 67 of those hours belonged to the Navy variant.

While admirals try to maintain strike fighter capabilities, the Navy is also looking at the next chapter in naval aviation. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told the show’s attendees that unmanned vehicles are the future.

“Over the next decade, we’ll move aggressively to develop a family of unmanned systems, including underwater systems, which will be able to operate for extended periods of time in support of our ships, our expeditionary units and our special warfare teams, and a low-observable, carrier-based, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance strike unmanned air system. There are, to be sure, technical challenges to overcome, but they have to be overcome because in so many ways, unmanned systems are the future,” Mabus said.