Years After USAF and Navy Were Told to Up Fighter Readiness, One Fleet Has Done It: F/A-18
Dec. 3, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak
The Navy is keeping its fleet of F/A-18 Super Hornets at 80 percent readiness, six years after former Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered both the Air Force and Navy to raise their fighters’ readiness levels. The Air Force, meanwhile, has abandoned that goal and its fighters’ mission capable rates are still lagging.
Speaking at the Stimson Center on Dec. 3, Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti said her service couldn’t afford to throw “more money and people at the problem” when Mattis ordered the increase in readiness rates, particularly for the Navy and Air Force’s biggest respective fighter fleets, the F/A-18 and F-16.
The Navy reached its goal with the F/A-18 “by unpacking the challenge,” Franchetti said of her aviation command, which looked for “the root cause, and started working on that.”
Service officials previously said that they succeeded with F/A-18 readiness by maintaining more comprehensive databases on each aircraft, using proactive maintenance, and streamlining the logistics and parts supply enterprise.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/usaf-navy-fighter-readiness-goals/
