Illustrious heads to sea - with an airgroup

[Modern Elmo]

The 2+ doesn't have as good a radar as the FA2

Why is the FA2 item better? Please give specific reasons.

it's a cut down F-16 job

Nope, F-18C/D: The AN/APG-65 radar is a highly reliable, flexible system used for both air-to-air and air-to-surface missions.


The key to the APG-65's flexibility is its programmable digital computers. The built-in test system provides total end-to-end radar preflight checkout and continuous monitoring.

During air-to-air operations, the APG-65 radar incorporates clean scope, look-down/shoot-down capabilities. It also features complete search track and automatic acquisition modes such as high pulse repetition frequency (PRF) velocity search, high/medium PRF range-while-search, single target track, and a track-while-scan mode that tracks 10 targets simultaneously and displays eight targets.

For air-to-surface operations, the radar provides Doppler beam sharpened sector and patch mapping, medium-range synthetic aperture radar, "real beam" ground mapping modes, as well as fixed and moving ground target track, air-to-surface ranging, terrain avoidance, precision velocity update, and a sea surface search mode with clutter suppression.

The APG-65 is operational in the F/A-18 Hornet F/A-18 A/B/C/D strike fighters of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, and the air forces of Kuwait, and Spain. It has been adapted to upgrade the German and Greek F-4 Phantom aircraft and AV-8B Harrier II Plus for the U.S. Marine Corps and the Spanish and Italian navies.

http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/apg65/

but works fine with the weapon of choice) - I photographed a trial fit on one with 6 AMRAAMS on BOL rails

Did you also get the tail numbers of all the airplanes?

it has a working gun too and with the big engine is able to keep up with a Bear at altitude - what more do you want ?!

A tactical aircraft with more range, endurance, payload, wartime survivability, and a better peacetime safety record.