By meeting the Navy's projected requirements with no cost overruns, the Super Hornet (F/A-18E/F, top) is the most cost-effective bridge from the F/A-18C/D to the Joint Strike Fighter.
Eight years have passed since the U.S. Navy selected the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet as its next tactical naval strike fighter. With the March 2000 decision to proceed with full-rate production, now is a good time to review the last decade of the F/A-18 and carrier aviation.
The requirements for naval aviation were framed in the context of naval force structure, affordability, and battle group capabilities. In each of the past Quadrennial Defense Reviews, the Navy has maintained a requirement for 15 battle groups. With fewer battle groups, the Navy cannot cover all of the national security requirements. Budget constraints, however, have forced the Navy to make do with 12 carriers and 10 air wings. While everyone is familiar with "budget constraints," few people understand how much the Navy budget has been reduced.
The years 1988-1992 were not kind to naval aviation funding. In November 1988, the F-14D program was fully funded and supported by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and the Secretary of the Navy (SecNav) in their Program Objective Memorandum 1990 (POM 90) submission. This F-14D upgrade program would have provided every active-duty air wing with 24 F-14D aircraft as the older F-14As and Bs were upgraded or retired.
In his April 1989 review of the POM 90 submission, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney cancelled the F-14D because of affordability concerns. At that time, the F-14D was perceived as a single-mission, fleet air-defense aircraft. At the same time, Secretary Cheney cut Northrop Grumman's B-2 program from 132 to 21, Boeing's C-17 transport from 210 to 120, and Lockheed Martin's F-22 stealth fighter from 750 to 648. The Air Force now plans to buy 338 F-22s.
In late 1989 and early 1990, the Navy began its POM 92 budget cycle. The CNO and SecNav again supported the F-14D upgrade. After the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the fleet air-defense mission lowered in importance. The multimission aircraft were viewed as the way of the future, leading to the development of the "Quick Strike" strike fighter version of the F-14D. The CNO and SecNav endorsed this roadmap and included the improvements in POM 92.
In September 1990, the White House and Congress agreed to reduce Department of Defense (DoD) spending by 25% over the next five years. In October 1990, the Naval Advance Tactical Fighter program was cancelled while still in the concept phase, and the F-14D Quick Strike (QS) continued in the Navy's POM 92 submission. During budget negotiations, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) conveyed to the Navy that the F-14D(QS) would be cancelled again.
In January 1991, the Navy's A-12 stealth aircraft program was cancelled for numerous reasons. Having been stung during the previous two years, the CNO did not propose the F-14D (QS) a third time. The Navy had lost $18 billion in aircraft procurement over five years. OSD does not have a fixed spending percentage between the services, so when the Navy lost money at the OSD level, the money was not automatically returned to the Navy coffers. The money usually is apportioned throughout DoD based on budget priorities, interservice politics, and sometimes just plain luck. In this case, the Navy had bad luck.
Instead of the proposed 25% decrease from 1990 to 1995, actual Navy spending decreased 33%, from $105 billion to $70 billion. From 1988 to 2000, overall Navy spending decreased 51% from $118 billion to $58 billion in constant dollars. The Navy still must maintain a credible worldwide presence within these budget constraints.
Three cornerstones emerged as the foundation of naval aviation:
Procure aircraft in sufficient quantity to meet worldwide commander-in-chief (CinC) requirements.
Maintain and fly those aircraft.
Improve the warfighting capability of those aircraft.
Numbers Count
"Augustine's Law"' states that DoD will have one aircraft in 2054, and that it will be shared by the services. On the positive side, it should have several bases from which to fly. The Navy's job during the past decade has been to prove Augustine wrong. In 1995, the CNO set the requirement of 50 strike fighter aircraft per air wing, the minimum number that would satisfy CinC requirements and allow autonomous naval strike operations. This number had been decreasing steadily since 1980 from almost 70 aircraft. While bitter, the cancellations of the F-14D(QS) and of the A-12 actually have worked to the Navy's budgetary advantage. The Navy could not have afforded three expensive programs with today's budget.
To keep 500 strike fighters in 10 carrier air wings, naval aviation has to maintain an inventory of 800 aircraft.2 The additional 300 aircraft support fleet replacement squadrons, adversaries, the reserves, research and development, and attrition. Since aircraft last approximately 20 years, the
CNO should buy 40 strike fighters per year to maintain inventory. These aircraft have to be affordable throughout their life cycle and provide growth potential. For the next ten years, only the F/A-18E/F will fill that requirement. The existing F/A-18C/D fleet begins to retire in 2002.3 Unlike past aircraft retirements, the F/A- 18 will retire when it no longer can fly safely. The A-6 and A-7 fleets were retired with service life remaining.
The Navy has four strike fighter programs. The F-14 is scheduled for retirement in 2008. The F/A-18C/D is scheduled for retirement in 2019. The F/A-18E/F will enter fleet service in 2001. Finally, the Joint Strike Fighter is scheduled to enter the Navy inventory in 2010.4 The good news is that naval aviation numbers have stabilized somewhat in the last five years at 46-47 strike aircraft per air wing and ten air wings in the Navy. The bad news is that the budget allotted to purchase aircraft continues to decrease. With the current funding levels, naval aviation cannot keep 50 strike aircraft per carrier and the required number of Marine Corps strike aircraft. The really bad news is that all military forces, from the Air Force to the submarine program, face the same numbers problem.
Flight Time Ain't Cheap
The Navy must maintain and fly aircraft in sufficient numbers to train aircrew and deploy overseas. After most programs have been developed and bought, the real money comes in. Research-and-development costs usually represent 10% of a program's overall cost. Procurement represents approximately 30% and operations and support (O&S) the final 60%. O&S includes the cost to train and pay all personnel, the cost of all consumables, all training expendables, all operational, intermediate, and depot maintenance cost, and all associated test kits and spare parts on the shelf. (O&S in this discussion includes both the traditional O&MN [parts] and MPN [manpower] Navy budgets.)
Not all O&S costs are equal. In 1990, the F-14D O&S costs were reported as $7,600 per flight hour. The F/A- 18 costs were $6,100. What is a measly $1,500 dollars per flight hour between friends? Assuming a squadron baseline of 5,000 flight hours per year, that difference is $7.5 million per squadron per year using the 1990 costs.
A 1990 OpNav study cites a 20-year life cycle comparison among 13 air wings with two different compositions. Air Wing A contained two squadrons F/A-18E/F squadrons with ten planes per squadron. Air Wing B contained two F-14D(QS) squadrons with ten planes per squadron. The study added three costs-R&D, procurement, and O&S-for the 20-year time frame. Air Wing A cost $41.9 billion, while Air Wing B cost $46.8 billion. The life cycle costs included $3.3 billion R&D dollars for the F/A-18E/F. The overall difference was $4.9 billion dollars over a 20-year period in 1990 dollars.
The O&S cost for the F/A-18E/F is approximately $6,700 per flight hour in 1999. The F-14 O&S costs have skyrocketed to nearly $10,900 per flight hour. In 1999, the O&S cost difference between a single F-14 squadron and an F/A- 18 squadron was nearly $21 million per year, per squadron, which is a lot of money, even at the Pentagon.
Modernization
The CNO must keep the fleet relevant in today's environment. Modernization dollars are the hardest dollars to protect in today's DoD budget. Since weapon systems have been purchased to deter a 20-year threat, how do you justify spending more dollars to upgrade that system, especially when the threats do not develop as forecast? The Navy, DoD, and Congress all love to take modernization money and spend it elsewhere. The Navy has been successful in protecting modernization money for the F/A- 18 and carrier aviation. To demonstrate, compare the capabilities of tactical aircraft in a 1991 squadron with the capabilities of the aircraft in 2001.
In 1990, the Navy carrier air wing had 65-70 aircraft. The F-14s were primarily air-to-air players with no significant air-to-ground capabilities. The A-6s were the only aircraft with significant laser self-designation capability. The F/A-18s were both air-to-air, air-to-ground, and suppression of enemy air defense players. While the F/A-18 had precision weapon capabilities with the Walleye and Maverick, it did not have a laser self-designation laserguided bomb (LGB) capability. In addition, the F/A-18 only had the AIM-7 missile and could target one aircraft at a time with its air-to-air weapon systems. The air wing had 36-45 attack aircraft, including A-6, A-7, and/or F/A18 aircraft. The majority of the attack aircraft were dropping general-purpose (GP) bombs. GP bombs usually meant lower probability of kill and required four aircraft dedicated to a single target to get an acceptable level of destruction. In addition, the main attack aircraft, the A-6 and A-7, required fighter escorts for their strike missions.
In 2001, the Navy carrier air wing has 46 precision strike fighters. Each of these aircraft has air-to-air capability and a laser self-designation LGB capability. The F-14 has added the low-altitude navigation and targeting infrared for night forward-looking infrared (LANTIRN FLIR) pod, a significant air-to-ground arsenal, and plans to field the GPS-aided joint direct-attack munition (JDAM) in the near future. The F-14D routinely performs the airborne forward air controller (FAC[A]) mission. In Operation Allied Force, the F-14Ds on the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) were the FAC(A) of choice.
The F/A-18C/D has added the AIM- 120 missile and the capability to engage multiple air-to-air targets simultaneously. The aircraft also has improved its air-to-ground capability with a laser self-designation FLIR capability, a GPS weapons suite with the JDAM, a joint stand-off weapon (JSOW), and the stand-off land attack missile (SLAM). As a final benchmark, the F/A-18C could destroy one-quarter of a target in 1990 with GP bombs. In 1995, the F/A-18C could destroy one target with LGB's. In 2001, the F/A-18C can destroy four targets with JDAM. In 2005, the F/A-18E/F should be able to destroy ten targets with JDAM. This is a pure war-fighting capability argument. It does not address the valid argument that the air wing in 2001 is easier and cheaper to maintain.
Why the F/A-18E/F?
Under political and cost constraints, the CNO only had two choices in 1992: Continue the purchase of the F/A-18C/D or purchase the F/A-18E/F. The F/A-18C/D, however, had some deficiencies from its original operational test. The Hornet Executive Steering Committee, the Navy CinCs, and the CNO outlined the requirements to correct the F/A-18C/D deficiencies:
Range/Endurance: The E/F will increase range up to 40% in a high-altitude profile and endurance by 50% when compared to the C/D. This increase comes without the five-tank configuration, which increases the range even further. The increased range and endurance will maintain the Navy's capability to shape, influence, and control the littoral battle space well into the threat forecast for 2010. During normal cyclic operations, the E/F will serve as the tanker for the F/A-18C and still perform their assigned mission. This increase in range and endurance alone would justify the increased cost of the F/A-18E/F.
Mission Payload: The E/F added two weapon stations and typically should fly with a single fuel tank. When compared to a typical, double-tank, fleet-configured C/D, the E/F has a net additional three weapons stations. The E/F would carry all of the weapons on the C/D, but in greater quantities. This additional payload will reduce the number of sorties by 1.7 times to destroy the same number of targets over a one-month campaign.
Bringback: The E/F can recover with three times the ordnance of the C/D. While the C/D was never designed to this requirement, current peacekeeping operations demand the increased bringback. The C/D has flown for nine years over the Iraq No-Fly Zone with a "Barney Fife" load (1 missile), primarily because the C/D has a limited bringback. The E/F solves that problem. With 9,000 pounds of bringback, the E/F could recover with 4,000 pounds of fuel and still have 5,000 pounds of ordnance.
Survivability: Rather than rely solely on stealth, the E/F took a systems approach to improve survivability. The aircraft was redesigned to accommodated improvements in aircraft systems and to incorporate new active and passive electronic warfare (EW) systems. The redesigned hydraulic systems, engine systems, and fire suppression systems reduced operational vulnerability.' Continued reductions in the E/F radar cross section enhanced the performance of new, active EW systems. Independent studies have confirmed survivability increases of F/A-18E/F as compared to F/A-18C/D per sortie. The improved survivability coupled with greater mission payload translates to fewer aircraft in threat envelopes for less time to get the same level of target destruction.
Growth: The E/F was built with sufficient growth volume, electrical power, and cooling to ensure the viability of the F/A-18E/F aircraft into 2020-2025. As an example, the E/F can incorporate an active electronically scanned array radar with nearly twice the power of the existing APG-73 radar in the C/D. The Super Hornet also has enough growth to incorporate many features of the EA-613 which make it an attractive follow-on aircraft to the Prowler. In addition, the C/D no longer has growth space. To incorporate the Link-16 terminal on the CID, the Navy had to shrink the joint tactical information distribution system (JTIDS) terminal and the high-speed antiradiation missile launch computer, and remove the tactical aircraft navigation (TacAN) computer. As a result, the Link-16 terminal had to add a TacAN functionality in addition to performing all of the Link-16 functions of the existing JTIDS terminal in the F-14D. Any additional black boxes installed in the C/D will have the same problem of replacing existing, necessary capabilities, adding any new functionality, and using existing cooling and power requirements. The growth space will also allow the E/F to maintain its warfighting edge well into the 21st century.
As these capabilities were defined, an analysis on alternatives was conducted to determine how best to retain/attain these capabilities. Numerous options were considered, from minor upgrades to existing airframes to completely new designs. The final configuration was based on minimizing risk, while maximizing the incorporation of the critical capabilities. The result was an affordable F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
Show Me the Money
The Navy strategy for developing the F/A-18E/F has brought several rewards. New aircraft engines and airframes take six to eight years for full testing. That timeline likely will remain constant. But because of the similarity to the F/A-18C/D, the F/A-18E/F program has flown an amazing 7,000 flight hours since November 1995. In contrast, the Euro-fighter has only flown 870 hours since March 1994. No other aircraft has flown more in development than the E/F. Those additional hours translate directly into a more mature airframe, larger weapons envelope, and increased weapons capability. Unlike previous aircraft types, the E/F will enter the service with a significant warfighting capability on the first day. When compared to the introduction of the F/A-18A/B in the 1980s, the accomplishments of the E/F program are remarkable.
In addition to a mature airframe, the E/F has the foundation of the amazing F/A-18C/D avionics. Rather than reinventing the wheel, the E/F started with one million lines of computer code, flight control computers, weapons computers, electronic warfare systems, radars and the myriad of data buses. The E/F also has added an incredible amount of capability to the F/A-18C/D. Without the E/F development money, the C/D likely would have been frozen in its 1992 configuration. The result is a computer designed in 2001 rather than in 1990 that can support the aircraft through 2020.6
With that mature avionics baseline, the Navy has been able to spend the money on more critical upgrades. The new advanced technology FLIR (scheduled for first cruise in 2002) and the shared aerial reconnaissance pod (scheduled for second cruise in 2003) will be the finest in the world. The active electronically scanned array radar will rival the F-22 air-to-air radar (scheduled for 2007). It will allow near simultaneous air-to-air performance, air-to-ground mapping, and electronic warfare functions. The decoupled cockpits will make the F/A-18E/F the finest two-seat tactical aircraft in the world.
Why does not the Navy just wait for the JSF? Two reasons. The JSF does not exist today. The carrier variant of the JSF will not exist until 2010. The F/A-18E/F is here today. And more to the point, the JSF is not a revolutionary development from the E/F. In most respects, the JSF will mirror the E/F capabilities. It will have a similar thrust-to-weight ratio, maneuverability and top-end speed, range and endurance, payload, bring back, and growth capacities. The two major JSF "unique" characteristics will be the inclusion of predictive maintenance and the low observable technology. The JSF will be a welcome addition to the Navy's capabilities in ten years. The F/A-18E/F is a welcome addition today.
The Future
The Navy's procurement strategy has been sound. By leveraging the C/D avionics and software, the Navy has developed an aircraft to meet its core inventory requirements today, with no cost overruns. The F/A-18E/F research and development has cost $5 billion. A new aircraft R&D is closer to $20 billion. The other $15 billion has been plowed back into extra flight time, additional aircraft, and a compressed development timeline.
The F/A-18E/F program has been under intense scrutiny since its inception. For the most part this scrutiny has been positive and has validated the program requirements. These program requirements have been revalidated by four successive CNOs, three successive Secretaries of the Navy, and two Presidents. The result of this scrutiny is an aircraft ready to fight on day one. When VFA-115 deploys in 2002 with the F/A-18E on the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), it will have greater warfighting capability than the squadron had with its F/A-18C Hornets.