"Yet Another U.S. F/A-18 Has Just Crashed In Japan..." Topic

… The Ninth In 6 Months.

"Reports are emerging that a U.S. F/A-18 Hornet has crashed earlier today in Japan. Rescue efforts to recover the pilot would be underway.

Although no further details are available at this time, the fact that the aircraft was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, seems to suggest the jet involved in the crash was a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18C/D model.

If confirmed this would be the 9th major incident involving a "Legacy Hornet" (including the Canadian CF-18 lost on Nov. 28, 2016) in the last 6 months.

Although each crash has its own root causes and may depend on several contributing factor (including the human error), we can't but observe, once again, that the rate of crashes involving legacy Hornets is alarming…"

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I hope they find the pilot/crew, and he/she/they're okay.

Well, they are getting rather old, and have tons of hours on them.

Many are beyond their original lifetime usage hours, but they've been trying to refurbish to extend that considerably.

No wonder why the USN wants to restart the production line, especially given the very slow rollout, and high costs of the F-35s.

Heard rumors on the news that production is being considered overseas, which I hope is not true, e.g. in India, and/or another country.

No wonder why the USN wants to restart the production line

F/A-18E/F Super Hornet production line never closed. USN is continuing to buy them albeit in lower numbers than before.

They want more Super Hornets and Congress keeps approving them in dribs and drabs.

The issue is older "legacy" F/A-18A-Ds. There is no proposal to restart production of these jets. And they're old but so are Australian ones and they don't crash as much (only 4 airframe losses in nearly 30 years out of fleet of 75).

Most legacy Hornets have had extensive SLEPs and upgrades to keep them viable.

Bare in mind USMC never acquired the E/F. Their youngest airframes are over 2 years old. Their maintenance programs have not been as efficient as other users so have dire aircraft availability rates. This impacts on training which in turn impacts of attrition.

Not sure if USN has same serviceability issues the USMC is.

As for O/S production, there is a new Indian competition for licence production of jet fighters after failure of MMRCA. Both the F-16 and F/A-18 are on offer.

There could be some export customers but I doubt USN production would be affected..

Ah, I see.

Thought they'd stopped producing them altogether.

I suspect that'll make them more likely to be a win in Canada too.

It is less an issue of age than flight hours, from what I've read, and the USA is well beyond their initial hours in many cases. They keep resetting the bar on that, with upgrades, but I suspect you can only do that so many times, and there is clearly some risk involved.

Of course, accidents occur with brand new aircraft too, but older ones seem to be more prone to breakdowns and gripes.

but older ones seem to be more prone to breakdowns and gripes.

Does depend on type. Ancient A-10s/F-15/F-16 have better availability/serviceability than new F-22s.

Older airframes generally require a little more maintenance sometimes, i.e. TLC. And newer aircraft sometimes require more maintenance because all the "bugs" and "gremlins" have not all been worked out.

I suspect that's less a statement about the older jets, and more a statement about the F-22.

F-22 is apparently a maintenance hog.

Older jets also have well established spares inventories and supply chains which keeps them in the air.

F-22 probably doesn't have these and given smaller numbers made, spares are probably a lot more costly and have longer lead times given sophistication and small unit numbers involved.

Eurofighter's been plagued by maintenance and spares issues as well. They pretty much instantly had to start cannibalising brand new jets to keep handfuls flying.

As always it's logistics that make or break a system.

As for aircraft losses, lets not forget most are due to human error even with older jets.

Switzerland has had a bad run with its F/A-18s over the last couple of years, losing 10% of its fleet (3 aircraft out of 33) in that time. In the same time the bigger F-5 fleet (54 airframes) has only lost 1 aircraft in a mid air collision.