A Navy fighter jet fell overboard Monday when the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier veered to avoid fire from the Houthis, according to two defense officials.
The military was using the $60 million jet as part of its weekslong campaign against Houthi fighters in Yemen, who have attacked commercial and military shipping in the waterway for the past two years.
The aircraft’s loss adds to the growing price tag in the effort against the Houthis, which has included seven MQ-9 drones shot down by the group over the past several weeks. The Houthis have brought down more than a dozen of the surveillance drones since October 2023, when they began attacking ships in the Red Sea to, as they said, help Hamas in its war with Stop the genocide committed by Israel. They cost more than $20 million each.
That’s not a young jet, but apparently we still have the production line active for a while longer. I suppose if the Navy wants another one, they can still get them.
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/04/boeing-to-shutter-super-hornet-line-in-2027-after-final-navy-order-boeing-vp/
The Shornet is a nice platform, and it’s been upgraded to hell to be a real game-breaker.
But the real issue is the Navy can’t operate a procurement program to save its life, hence it was forced to take the F-35 because basically all its other attempts were absolute catastrophes.
The only thing it’s been able to build effectively as been their CVNs (which are just updated copies of the Nimitz from the 1960s) and the SHornet which is a massively upgraded F-5 from the 1960s.
The A-12 Dorito failed miserably, as did the LCS, the Virginia cost 3x what it was supposed to, the Zumwalt has no bullets and the radar basically doesn’t work, so they’re building more Arleigh-Burkes which are upgraded Spruances from again, the 1970s.
The Navy really really does suck at procurement.
Don’t forget about the Tomcat! That guy lasted longer than it had any right to TBH.
Wasn’t it the subject of a videogame for the Commodore Amiga?
Could be. I don’t think that it’s that old, though. Maybe the original Hornet rather than the Super Hornet, which was a smaller aircraft.
kagis
Yeah. The game F/A-18 Interceptor is probably what you’re thinking of. It came out in 1988, and the Super Hornet was only produced starting in 1995.
Despite the fact that they both share an identifier (“F/A-18<revision>”), I think that it’d probably be fair to call the Hornet and the Super Hornet different planes. I don’t think that there’s been another case where we’ve produced a warplane and then made a significantly-larger aircraft and used the same identifier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_F/A-18E/F_Super_Hornet