The Navy is looking at the possibility of extending the service life of its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet strike fighters to 9,000 flight hours from the design 6,000 hours if the operational tempo ages the aircraft earlier than planned.
Capt. Mark Darrah, the Navy’s program manager for the Super Hornet, told reporters May 3 at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition that the Navy “will implement pre-emptive-type things as we discover [needs].”
The Navy expects to begin retirement of the Super Hornet in 2025, with the type withdrawn from service by 2030.
Darrah said the Super Hornet is a robust design and the aircraft fleet was doing “real well” with regard to wing-root fatigue life expenditure (FLE). Under current operations, wing-root FLE is most intense during the training work-up cycle, while less so during the combat operations over Afghanistan, with the low airframe stress of long transits to the target areas and a benign air-defense environment. More difficult to manage, he said, was the accumulation of flight hours with the long transits.
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