Why do people think the F-18 sucks?

I live near Pensacola (the home base of the blue angels) and watch the blue angels all the time. The pure acrobatic ability of the F-18 amazes me. I think the blue angels are the best air acrobatic team in the world (please show me proper competition). F-18s don't have a great air to air combat record, but I don't think navy fighters are meant for purely air superiority roles. For what it is I think the F-18 is dope plane. I wished the Navy would have made a stealth version instead of buying the shitty F-35. Thoughs?

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It is not as good as the F-14 it replaced.
Short range, even the superbug.
Turn 'n' burn doesn't win.

>The pure acrobatic ability of the F-18 amazes me
How many other aircraft have you seen in an acrobatic show? Sounds like you haven't seen much

Because it does everything worse than the F-15, except it gets deployed from a carrier for better response time.

This, mostly. Everyone was perfectly happy with the F-18 until it muscled into the F-14's role and turned out to do poorly in it.

They don’t seem to hit the ground nearly as often as the vatniks

Yeah, but it's better in every other roles that the F-14 was terrible at.

And that is why you should have airframes dedicated for specific tasks instead of making a lukewarm jack of all trades.

Now imagine if Blue Angels fly Tomcats instead. They could probably do some crazy shit with that swing wing.

the american government isn’t good at that

Correct. Military industrial complex fucks us yet again.

Nobody thinks the F-18 sucks.
>It is not as good as the F-14 it replaced.
You're an idiot.

We're not in the 70s anymore.
Using specialized airframes is disadvantageous in terms of costs, maintenance, serviceability and logistics.
Especially when talking about carrier-based planes, having only one main fighter to deal with greatly increases the number of plane you can carry.

F/A-18

If you compare new build Tomcats with new hornets and even superhornets, the tomcat smokes it in every category except maint. man hours. A super tomcat would have offered much, much more capability to the navy while reducing maintenance costs of legacy tomcats.

But the simple fact is that the ussr desolved, and the hornet and rhino are "good enough" for the post cold war mission.
Also Cheney had ties to northrop.

And before you comment, I'm aware the bug is more agile close in, it was originally a LWF design after all. Hornet vs tomcat is very much like viper vs eagle.

But there's literally no need for that.
It doesn't need to be faster, heavier or fly higher.
What is useful, however, is a cheaper and smaller airframe with better availability.

Right, that's what I said.

In an alternate universe, where the commies were still a near peer threat, a super tomcat would have offered needed capability to the USN. Faster, MUCH faster with a heavy loadout, much more fuel, range, loiter, radar size, etc. A moderized super tomcat with aesa, amraams, ram, new motors, would have been a monster for the fleet, albeit very expensive. And would have provided interim capability until the NATF sea raptor variant was developed.


In this timeline however, it was just not necessary, for bombing goat herders and scaring Chang and drunken Ivan.

For the record I love the OG bug. Love me some independence day. And the blue angels are 100% shit hot.

It makes sense, in that way, to have an heavy counterpart to the F-18, like the F-15 to the F-16.
But the swing wing would have been an issue in the modernization process I believe. It's one of the most maintenance intensive part of the plane, and modern designs/flight control systems virtually eliminate the advantages of variable geometry.

For me, its the F-15K

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>Muh F-14

Lmao imagine defending an aged hulk of shit that needed a man just to use the radar because of a movie

>Slam Eagle
Coolest name for a plane ever

So why does South Korea get their F-35s even though they are importing S-400 technologies for their ABM systems while Turkey can't get theirs for doing the same?

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You an SNA/SNFO?

I agree with the high-lo fighter arrangement.
And I agree that swing wings are more maintenance heavy, but the ready rate for new build F-14Ds was not that horrible, that was the worn out A models and B converts. Read up on tomcat sunset forums and MATS, ready rates were just not as bad as everyone says. Yes we all know maintainers who got in in 2001-2006 that just remember trying to cobble together working jets out of beaten up tomcats, but when new they were not THAT bad. Plus as a said the plan was to modernized the rest of the jet; most of the Tomcats maintenance woes were the old as fuck systems and miles of hydraulic lines that would be replaced in D+ models.

And yes, I expect that if a NATF would have been built, it would have likely just looked like a beefier, bigger raptor with a bigger wing and a tailhook.

More like viper vs F4

I wish someone ressurected the F-14 with stealth capabilities. Just imagine how awesome it would be.

>It is not as good as the F-14 it replaced

No, it's much better.

Fly-By-Wire

I think it's too generic

what's wrong with FBW?

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Nothing, it is the future.

It's cheaper, simpler, more reliable. It's packed full of tech and wiz bang systems, but similar stuff could have been put in a tomcat. Superbugs are slow as fuck, and probably the most draggy fighter on the planet with a heavy load out.

It's like comparing a brand new camry to a 60s Shelby cobra.

>Using specialized airframes is disadvantageous in terms of costs, maintenance, serviceability and logistics.

Yes, it's much better to build a single airframe and try to make it do everything at once and inevitabely fail at everything. coughcoughFail-35coughcough

Late F-4s were more maneuverable than early f-14s

F-18 SUCKS

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Read this: it explains why lack of range is a big fucking problem after the tomcat and a6 were retired.

cnas.org/publications/reports/retreat-from-range-the-rise-and-fall-of-carrier-aviation

The fly offs conducted between navy tomcats and phantoms showed the tomcat to fly rings around the f4, especially at high altitude.