Navy Carrier Puts New Jet to Test
In aviation or athletics, it is never easy to replace a legend in the lineup.
Comparisons are inevitably invidious. Nostalgia and loyalty are high hurdles.
And so some sympathy might be in order for the 33 tons of metal and advanced electronics called the F/A-18 Super Hornet.
It has fallen to this much-debated, much-analyzed aircraft to supplant the vaunted F-14 Tomcat, the Navy plane that Tom Cruise immortalized in the 1986 movie “Top Gun.”
After a decade of research and development, the Super Hornet, officially the E and F version of the Hornet class of fighter, is on the verge of joining the fleet on the high seas as “the pointy end of the spear” of U.S. foreign policy.
For a while at least, the Super Hornet will be an all-West Coast show: The first squadron of planes was tested at China Lake, is based at Lemoore, Calif., and is assigned to a carrier whose home port is Everett, Wash.
If all goes well with the West Coast fleet, the East Coast fleet will follow.
The first batch of pilots and weapons officers who will fly the Super Hornet on a real deployment began doing landings and takeoffs this week from the carrier Lincoln, steaming 100 miles off the Southern California coast.
There is a squadron of Navy brass hats and aerospace industry technicians aboard the Lincoln to see if the dozens of technological concerns about the Hornet can be satisfied, or at least explained away.
Like every weapon system since the slingshot, the Hornet has its critics.
In the Congress, the Pentagon and the General Accounting Office, doubters have questioned the cost, capability and strategic assumptions behind the plane. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) calls it the Superfluous Hornet.
In a couple of weeks, Feingold will have another shot at the F-18 when the Navy asks Congress for approval to go thumbs-up on full production: 548 Super Hornets at $50.1 million per plane. The main contractor is Boeing, with work also done by Northrop Grumman and Raytheon plants in Southern California.
Analysts are aboard the Lincoln to worry about payload bring-back, survivability, service ceiling, sustainability and other aviation arcana.
But there is another constituency that has to be satisfied: the aviators who will fly the plane, particularly those who have flown the Tomcat.
“The F-14 community loves its plane, but I think they’re going to be convinced this is a better airplane,” said Super Hornet pilot Lt. Beth Creighton. “The goal of an airplane is to shoot down bad guys and destroy their stuff. The Super Hornet will be great at that.”
Naval aviators are ferociously loyal to their planes, even as they curse the quirks that have afflicted every plane since Wilbur and Orville left the bicycle shop.
For example, if you are in an elevator with aviators who once flew the A-6 Intruder, it would be best not to suggest that the Pentagon was correct in phasing out the blunt-nosed bomber in 1997. Your survivability could not be assured under such a condition.
The loyalty among Navy fliers to the F-14 is no less fervent--although it was hardly love at first sight.
When the Tomcat joined the fleet in 1974, there were engine problems, stalling problems and handling problems. There were crashes. Skeptics called it the F-14 Turkey.
Turning a term of derision into one of camaraderie, Tomcat loyalists for years held an annual Turkey Trot Ball at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego.
With its problems finally fixed after years of redesign, the Tomcat became widely acknowledged as the best fighter ever built for speed, endurance and lethality (although many an F-4 Phantom pilot might disagree).
“The F-14 was unique among aircraft in that it earned more respect as it got older,” said James W. Huston, former F-14 aviator turned San Diego lawyer and author whose next novel, “Flash Point,” to be released next month, has an F-14 on the cover.
The F-14 shot Libyans from the sky, forced the Achille Lauro hijackers to land their getaway plane, provided air dominance during the Gulf War and led bombing raids on Kosovo.
For more than two decades, the Navy had a standing order that no carrier could deploy without two 14-plane squadrons of Tomcats to intimidate any potential adversary.
Past glories aside, the Tomcat’s active-duty days are limited. Each carrier now only has one Tomcat squadron, and there are no squadrons based on the West Coast. The early model Hornets have been sharing fighter duties with the Tomcat for more than a decade.
Now, with the Super Hornet on the horizon, the F-14 has a date later this decade with the Navy’s retirement home for warplanes in the Arizona desert. The plane is old and maintenance problems are mounting.
Adm. Jay Johnson, chief of naval operations, calls the Super Hornet “the cornerstone of the future of carrier aviation.” That sort of description used to be reserved for the Tomcat.
Still, there are those who continue to think Congress erred in deciding to fund the Super Hornet program and scrap plans for an upgraded Tomcat to be called the Bombcat.
There is a rogue Web site for unreconstructed F-14 crew members that asks whether the F-18 is ready to become “the Navy’s next-generation interceptor and fleet protector.”
It does not help the Super Hornet’s image that the Marine Corps, which flies earlier versions of the Hornet, has opted not to buy the Super Hornet.
Scuttlebutt aboard the Lincoln is that the F-14 pilots are--reluctantly, perhaps--transferring their affection to the Hornet, which has superior overall range, larger wings, better electronics and a dazzling array of weapons.
“Believe it or not, I think some of the F-14 guys are ready to fall in love with another plane,” said Lt. Mark Weisgerber, a Super Hornet instructor whose job is to teach former Tomcat aviators to fly the Super Hornet.
The Hornet has picked up some important political support from onetime skeptic Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-San Diego), a decorated fighter pilot from the Vietnam War who initially opposed the Super Hornet and wanted the Navy to upgrade the Tomcat.
Cunningham recently flew the Super Hornet, put it through combat-like paces, and came away convinced that the Super Hornet is a better plane for the future than the Tomcat, even if lacks the Tomcat’s ability to fly at twice the speed of sound.
“Your airplane is like your wife: There are good points and bad points,” Cunningham said from his office in Washington. “You love the good points and learn to put up with the bad points.”
The Super Hornet staff is hopeful about winning hearts and minds. “We have made a believer out of every Tomcat person who has flown the Super Hornet,” said Denise Deon, Super Hornet spokeswoman for the Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, Md.
Some F-14 aviators are staying put, riding their planes until the end; others are transferring.
Lt. Richard Byrnes, a former Tomcatter now in training to become a weapons officer on the Super Hornet, thinks that one flight in the new plane will dispel any qualms.
“The Super Hornet is extremely departure-resistant,” Byrnes said, “which gives the air crew the capability of pushing to the very edge of its operating envelope with absolute confidence.”
Translation: The Super Hornet has shown no tendency to shimmy or go out of control even at high speeds and during difficult aerobatics. The F-14, beloved though it may be, has always been prone to bucking and jumping and has been difficult to land on a carrier.
As yet, Hollywood has announced no plans that would give the Super Hornet the kind of acclaim that the F-14 achieved with “Top Gun.”
But the military-industrial-entertainment complex has other ways of bestowing star status.
Digital Integration, publisher of state-of-the-art computer games offering simulated air combat situations, is swamped with orders for its latest game, to be released this summer: the F/A-18E Super Hornet fully interactive cockpit that allows dogfights and firing of weapons.
The company does not sell a similar game for the F-14 Tomcat.
