Navy Details Its Plans To Add Ex-Air Force F-16s To Its Fleet

[rangerrebew]

Navy Details Its Plans To Add Ex-Air Force F-16s To Its Fleet
As the Navy accelerates plans to retire its ‘legacy’ Hornets, it badly needs new high-end aggressor jets.
By Thomas Newdick May 28, 2021

    The War Zone

 

The U.S. Navy is moving ahead with plans to introduce more F-16 Viper fighter jets to replace ‘legacy’ F/A-18 Hornets used in the adversary role. The War Zone has reported in the past about Navy aspirations to add ex-Air Force Vipers to its ranks, and originally broke the story when it was still little more than a crewroom rumor. Now part of the Pentagon’s formal budget request for the 2022 Fiscal Year, which you can read more about here.

The request seeks to accelerate the retirement of the Navy’s remaining ‘legacy’ F/A-18A/B/C/D Hornets and the acquisition of replacement aggressor jets for a portion of these jets should help achieve that. Already operated exclusively by Reserve units, the ‘legacy’ Hornets are now to be retired by 2022, two years earlier than planned, with around 55 examples slated to go over the next 12 months. Among these are some of the Navy’s most important adversary airframes that frequently push fleet pilots to their limits.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40846/navy-details-its-plans-to-add-ex-air-force-f-16s-to-its-fleet

[PeteS in CA]

The Navy is doing this for the same reason F6F Hellcats aren't being used as "adversaries", to have modern aircraft in training. Rev A and Rev B F/A-18s were what came into the fleet in the 1980s. Their capabilities are not current, maintenance is probably needed more frequently, and some spare parts are probably getting hard to find (e.g., does AMD still make 2900 series bit-slice processors, which are used in the original MDI?).