Improve F/A-18 Super Hornet Training and Readiness with More Missiles and Fewer Missions
Graham Scarbro
November 5, 2019
The performance of American naval aviators in the early years of the Vietnam War was dismal. Navy fighter jets, launching from aircraft carriers on “Yankee Station,†flew air-to-air and air-to-ground missions over North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese sortied their own fighter jets, Soviet-built MiGs to shoot down American aviators, resulting in intense aerial combat between the two forces. From June 1965 to September 1968, U.S. aircraft fired nearly 600 air-to-air missiles. In nearly 360 engagements, the likelihood of a kill was one per ten missiles shot, and the kill ratio between U.S. aviators and the North Vietnam Air Force was two to one. In the Korean War, American fighters had enjoyed a 10-to-1 ratio, in World War II, the Navy F6F Hellcat fighter’s kill ratio was 20-to-1. Something needed to change.
The Navy directed Captain Frank Ault to assess what went wrong. He published his findings in The Report of the Air-to-Air Missile System Capability Review, commonly known as “The Ault Report.†The report led to the creation of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, or TOPGUN. Ault singled out two major problems with fighter squadron training and readiness. First, F-4 Phantom II pilots were not firing enough air-to-air missiles in training to prepare them for employing the missiles in combat. Next, the multi-role Phantom was being over-used for air-to-ground missions, resulting in aviators unskilled in aerial combat. The Navy consequently refocused on air-to-air employment and by the end of the conflict, the kill ratio improved significantly, to as high as 15-to-1.
https://warontherocks.com/2019/11/improve-super-hornet-training-and-readiness-with-more-missiles-and-fewer-missions/
