Hyper Hornet

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It's fair to say that all of the 4th gen fighter aircraft have evolved significantly from their inception to the present day, but with the International Super Hornet Roadmap - or as I like to call it, Hyper Hornet - Boeing aims to set new benchmarks in terms of just how far one can evolve a platform dating back to the 70s.

Boeing is clearly pitching Hyper Hornet primarily as a low-risk alternative to the F-35 to take advantage of that program's various development woes and cost overruns. Whether a Super Hornet integrating all of these options would actually be a whole lot cheaper than an F-35 is anyone's guess. No doubt Boeing would say 'yes'.

In any case, I'd love to see something like this flying, but the sticking point - unsurprisingly - seems to be money. With the exception of the engine upgrade (offering ~20% greater thrust over the base F414) which is already part of Boeing's pitch to India for its MMRCA program, none of this stuff is funded. The US Navy - already scraping the barrel to afford F-35 - isn't planning to do so, and most other current and potential operators are too small to afford to do it themselves. Of course, if the F-35C really falls in a hole that could all change, but if we assume that it doesn't then the best chances for seeing Hyper Hornet realised would seem to lie with Brazil, Japan and India.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I can pretty much gaurantee you this would be cheaper than the F-35, if only because sooner or later all those superhornets are going to have to be replaced with SOMETHING, and retrofitting them to the upgraded configuration is bound to be cheaper than building a whole new plane. Especially since, if push comes to shove, they can omit some of the new features and save the ones that matter most (the engines, conformal fuel tanks and the new cockpit are a given; spherical warning might fit too, if Boeing can talk up the "We're gonna go to war with China soon" angle).

 

[RobertVA]

All the high G carrier operations, dive bombing and fighter dog fights are a lot harder on the core airframe than the land based operations and high altitude bomb runs that B-52s are used for. Then there's the corrosion issues of the salt spray while deployed on the carrier. Those superhornets aren't going to last as long as a B-52.

 

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^ The Super Hornets are intended to serve until at least 2025 in the US Navy, probably longer. The F-35C will be replacing vanilla Hornets in the inventory, not Super Hornets.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Funny, I thought the supers were supposed to be replacing the baseline hornets, not the Lightnings.

 

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They might've replaced some vanilla Hornets at this point, but certainly the original order was only intended to replace the A-6 and F-14. The subsequent and ongoing orders have been to fill holes opening up in the inventory as a result of the F-35 delays. The Navy certainly won't be buying nearly as many F-35s as originally intended, and the Super Hornet will serve alongside the F-35 until the former is replaced by NGAD or whatever in the post-2025 timeframe.

Boeing has its Hyper Hornet mock-up down at Bangalore for Aero India this week. This just popped up courtesy of Flightglobal:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE3h8yImm4U[/yt]

No look at the cockpit unfortunately. I understand it features a single large display similar to the F-35's.