Originally Posted by
ORAC
But that is exactly what they have been doing for the last few years - and continue to do. That’s above and beyond the upgrade programme above.
As I understood it the USN had planned to replace its legacy Hornets with F35Cs in the first instance as the legacy airframes were getting rather long in the tooth, so replacing the USN legacy fleet is not much of an issue.
As I understood it the USMC had decided not to replace its legacy Hornet fleet with Super Hornets but go directly to F35Cs. It could be argued that having an all F35 (B&C) fleet would give the USMC some savings.
Whilst replacing legacy Hornets with new build Super Hornets would materially increase the availability of airframes for the fleet, it would mean a major change in strategy for the USMC, not something that I have seen discussed?
The subsidiary question is I suppose how many legacy Hornet squadrons are there in the fleet, thus how many new build Super Hornets would be required to make the whole afloat and training fleets Super Hornet, somewhere in the hundreds I would have thought?