THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 19, 1995 TAG: 9509190046
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ST. LOUIS LENGTH: Long : 161 lines
The Navy on Monday showed off its attack plane of tomorrow, a larger, more versatile, nastier version of the F/A-18 Hornet that already dominates its carrier decks.
As hundreds of aircraft artisans at the McDonnell Douglas Corp. plant admired their handiwork, military brass led by Navy Secretary John H. Dalton and Adm. Mike Boorda, the chief of naval operations, extolled the Hornet E/F's redesigned wing, its more powerful engines, its added range.
The new model will be known as the ``Super Hornet,'' Boorda announced as banks of floodlights bathed the sleek craft in a rainbow of color. The plane ``will be able to deliver a punch from the sea that no one can ignore,'' he said.
The festive unveiling - the first Super Hornet won't actually begin test flights until December - underscored the plane's importance to the Navy and McDonnell Douglas. The Navy is investing $5 billion and staking the future of naval aviation on the jet; it will use the new Hornet to replace the F-14 Tomcat, its premier dogfighter, and the venerable A-6 Intruder, its long-range bomber.
In time, the Super Hornet also will replace the first Hornets, built in the early 1980s.
For McDonnell Douglas, the nation's second-largest defense contractor, construction of the current Hornet, the C/D, and development of the successor E/F have helped keep the company in business. The Hornet program provides jobs for 7,000 McDonnell Douglas workers in St. Louis and 20,000 others employed by subcontractors in 47 states.
McDonnell Douglas' survival was threatened after the sudden cancellation in 1991 of the A-12, a proposed Navy bomber, and its loss in competition for a new Air Force fighter.
The Navy and the company are still in court over the A-12's demise - a trial on McDonnell Douglas' $1 billion damage claim is to begin in November. But corporate and military leaders insisted Monday that they've worked well together on the new Hornet.
Hampton Roads also has a stake in the Hornet. Beginning next year, more than 200 of the jets will relocate from Cecil Field, near Jacksonville, to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. An aggressive local campaign to sell the Navy on that move probably saved Oceana in this year's round of military base closings; the A-6 Intruders that have long been the base's main tenant are being retired.
But amid Monday's show of the pride of the Hornet's builders and the confidence of naval leaders in the plane's capabilities, there are questions about whether the Navy really needs or can afford it and whether it's the plane to carry naval aviation into the 21st century.
Because the end of the Cold War left the Navy with unchallenged domination of the seas, the sea service has shifted to a strategy that concentrates on delivering power to regions relatively close to coastlines. Well over half the world's population lives in those regions.
With a range for bombing missions of around 370 miles, the Hornet C/D can handle most missions. It proved its mettle at the outset of the Persian Gulf War, as four Hornets from the carrier Saratoga interrupted a bombing mission to down a pair of Iraqi MIGs and then went on to bomb some Iraqi airfields. During the recent NATO strikes in Bosnia, Hornets from the carrier Theodore Roosevelt have pounded Serb positions around Sarajevo.
J.J. Dicks, a civilian who is the Navy's deputy program manager for the E/F development, suggests that the new model's added range could protect the Navy's most valuable asset, its carriers, by letting captains keep the big ships farther from shore.
In nautical tight corners, like the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf, the new Hornet's longer range ``just provides the battle group commander more flexibility in (deciding) where he wants to launch his strike from,'' Dicks said.
Franklin C. Spinney, a Pentagon program analyst who has been perhaps the Hornet's most vocal critic, argues that the E/F is ``a Cold War relic'' that will end up costing far more than the Navy estimates.
And James P. Stevenson, a longtime defense correspondent who has written a book on development of the Hornet, said ``there is no advancing threat to justify a new airplane.'' He has suggested that the new model was conceived in the Bush administration to keep McDonnell Douglas afloat.
Stevenson is among a band of skeptics who argue that the current Hornet, the C/D, should be sufficient for the Navy's needs for years to come. Rather than invest $5 billion in developing a new Hornet, the critics suggest that the service should buy more C/Ds.
The Navy says each E/F will cost just under $37 million in 1990 dollars. It uses that figure because 1990 was the initial year of the new model's development and the constant dollar estimate eliminates the effects of inflation.
But in actual dollars spent at the time of purchase over the next two decades, the new planes will cost an average of about $62 million each, the Navy says.
That figure almost surely will rise, Spinney said, as costs of the initial Hornet, the A/B, and the current C/D far exceeded the Navy's initial projections. In 1978, when the Hornet program was beginning, the Navy estimated the average cost per plane at $20 million. Congress is preparing to appropriate about $58 million for each of 12 C/D Hornets it will buy in fiscal year 1996.
If the E/F's costs don't grow, ``this'll probably be the first plane in history where they didn't,'' he said.
Still, development of the Super Hornet to date has cost less than the Navy expected, a first for such a program. And Dicks argues that production advances by McDonnell Douglas and the Navy provide reason for optimism that the E/F can stay under budget.
``There's 30 percent fewer parts in the E/F than the C/D,'' Dicks said, despite the new plane's increased complexity. Teams of engineers, builders, designers and pilots have worked together throughout the development process to keep the plane durable and easy to maintain, the Navy contends.
Spinney argues that even if the new Hornets hit their cost target, the Navy will have a tough time buying enough of them to meet its needs.
He and other critics of the new Hornet foresee a procurement ``train wreck'' early in the next decade, as planes now in the Navy's inventory reach the end of their useful lives and the service must ask Congress to pay for ever-more-expensive replacements.
The Navy's own projections indicate that by 2007, the average Navy jet will be more than 14 years old, almost five years above the current average. The Hornet boasts the best reliability record in the history of naval aviation, but like all planes ``it's going to be a maintenance problem'' as it ages, Spinney said.
Even under current plans, with an aging inventory being slowly replaced by new Hornets, the Navy's figures indicate it will need procurement budgets as large as those of the Cold War era to keep its carrier decks loaded.
``You think that's going to happen?'' Spinney said.
Spinney asserted that the Hornets will get even more expensive as defense contractors develop more sophisticated electronics and weapons systems to load aboard them. Those new features also will add weight, reducing the plane's range and/or the amount of weapons it can carry.
Dicks acknowledged that the new model's design has 17 cubic feet of empty space to accommodate upgrades into the next century.
Signs of the pinch the Navy is facing are apparent, Spinney argued. Carriers now sail with about 50 attack jets - 15 to 20 fewer than they carried just a few years ago.
Spinney, a former Air Force pilot, follows the Hornet and other tactical aviation programs as a member of the Defense Department's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation.
Though the Navy currently expects to buy 1,000 Super Hornets by 2015, Adm. Boorda acknowledged that the pace of those purchases is uncertain. The Hornet C/D is still in production and remains an extremely capable plane, he said. ``We will evolve into (the Super Hornet) over time.'' ILLUSTRATION: The new F/A-18's longer range might allow the Navy to keep its
carriers farther from shore.
McDonnell-Douglas is developing the single-seat Hornet ``E'' for
the Navy; an ``F'' version, with two seats, will be used by the
Marine Corps. Here's how the new models will compare with the Hornet
``C'' and ``D'' now in use.
Hornet C/D Hornet E/F
Weight (max) 51,900 lbs 66,000 lbs
Length 56 ft. 60 ft.
Wingspan 40 ft. 45 ft.
Bombing range 369 mi. 520 mi.
Cost $58 million each * $62 million each **
Engine 2 F404 engines 2 F404 engines
17,700 lbs thrust each 20,000 lbs thrust each
Speed Mach 1.8 plus Mach 1.8 plus
Combat ceiling 50,000 ft. 50,000 ft.
Weapons 9 11
stations
*Those built earlier were less **Projected. Critics say the cost
will rise.
by CNB