This seems like significant news.
The US, and Ukraine are discussing sending 41 Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) F/A-18A/B Hornet fighter jets to Ukraine, rather than scrapping them as planned.
Since the US recently granted permission for other Western allies to supply Kyiv with advanced fighter jets, Washington is open to the idea of gifting Ukraine retired RAAF F/A-18 fighter jets, Euromaidan Press reports.
Seventy-five F/A-18A/Bs were acquired by the RAAF from 1985 to replace the ageing Mirage III fighter which had been in service since 1963. The first two aircraft were produced in the US, with the remainder assembled in Australia at Government Aircraft Factories.
Giving them to Ukraine rather than scrapping them makes sense. Australia can’t use them, as they’re transitioning to F-35s, and the U.S. can’t use them since they’ve already transitioned both carrier-based and Marine F/A-18s to the much beefier F/A-18E/F Super-Hornets.
The F/A-18 was originally designed as a carrier plane, but several militaries around the world use them as all-purpose fighter aircraft.
Will Ukraine be able to make use of them? Sure! Just like the F-16s that Ukraine may get sometime, F/A-18A/Bs are reasonably modern fighter aircraft that can more than hold their own against any but the very most modern Russia jet fighters aircraft. (Maybe the Su-57 is better, just like it appears on paper; but a lot of Soviet and Russian gear that looks great on paper turns out to be crap.) One of the first rules of warfare is that you can’t beat something with nothing.
But, as with the F-16, it’s going to take a lot of training before even experienced fighter jet pilots would be cleared to fly F/A-18s in combat. Probably at least six months of type trying in simulators and tandem and solo flying. Maybe more, because Soviet/Russian jets are so different from U.S. jets, maybe less Because War. In any case, it will be too late to take part in the vaunted Spring Counteroffensive, which may or may not be going on right now.
But the way this war has dragged on, there’s a good chance Ukraine will still need them by 2024…
Tags: aircraft, Australia, F/A-18 Hornet, Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine
Yeah, F-16s, F-18s, that’ll do it.
Gimme a break. Obama, Biden, and Brennan started this crap and Ukraine will end up a basket case having lost 1/4 of its territory and access to the Black Sea. How much of the money we sent there came back to line their pockets that’s the real question.
As for Nordstream … paybacks are a bitch and we’ll have Biden to thank for that too.
There’s a reasonable chance that Ukraine will be dealing with Russian Federation collapse issues well into the 22nd Century…
I think that we’re only about two or three wrong moves by Putin/Lukashenko away from civil war breaking out in both Belarus and Russia, after which all bets are off.
Circa 1991-ish, there were frantic Pentagon efforts to put together a plan to pre-emptively move into the former Soviet Union and secure their nukes. Those never had to be put into use, obviously, but I sincerely hope that someone has kept those at least updated enough to use for a hasty plan to do that. If it happens, it’ll have to be the US that does it, because ain’t nobody else got the strategic lift to do it…
Nightmare scenario, that… And, absent cooperation from most of the site commanders, literally impossible to do.
Nukes in the hands of a collapsed post-Russian Federation cluster-f*ck are beyond nightmare, but what you’d do about them? Another whole series. Although, I rather doubt that they’d work “as advertised”, or that the whole thing would be much more than a fizzle. The real problem would be dealing with the “leakers” from the SLBM force that got out of harbor.
The world has gotten increasingly crazy, over the last few decades. I almost preferred the old days of the Soviet Union/US bipolar craziness… At least, that was predictable. Somewhat.
Swear to God, were you to write down the actual history of the last forty-plus years, and then take it back in a time machine to try and sell as a techno-thriller at any point up until about 1989? You’d have been laughed out of the publisher’s office, for having the balls to submit something so mindlessly implausible…
@The Gaffer,
If you think the Russian Federation is long for this earth, or at all likely to win on the ground? I really have to wonder at your understanding of this situation.
You’ve got a power that is four or five times bigger in population than Ukraine, with a much larger economy, more resources, more military potential… And, it’s been ground flat over the last year-plus. The fact that they didn’t manage the “three-day plan” is telling, and what it should be telling you is that the Russian Federation is a dead state walking.
There are a lot of “tells”, but the fact that this has dragged on for as long as it has should be one of them. The next few months are going to be critical for their survival, and I don’t think they’re going to make it. That Wagner is nearly at open warfare with the Russian Army? Taking Lieutenant Colonel’s prisoner and torturing them? Does that not tell you something about what is really going on?
Ah, well… Too many are locked into the idea that the Russian Federation is a major power, rather than a third-rate country cosplaying as a superpower.
F/A-18s have two immediate advantages over the Lawn Dart…err, Fighting Falcon F-16s:
First they feature notably more robust landing gear than the known-to-be-somewhat-fragile F-6 legs, as required for regularly controlled-crashing on the roof of an aircraft carrier. Since these Ozzie Hornets were not operated from carriers, they were not bashed around nearly as much as the USMC and USN F/A-18As and Bs, yet they feature all the latest features in their weapons delivery computer systems software and are qualified to drop or launch all sorts of cool boom-making-things.
And most notably from a support and base infrastructure point of view, they do not use frelling HYDRAZINE, yes, the hypergolic super nasty very dangerous rocket fuel stuff, like the F-16 does for the onboard Emergency Power Units. Base support and crash crews where F-16s operate have to don full-up toxic protective gear, so basically, space suits, to deal with leaking or crashed Lawn Darts as Hydrazine is Mucho No Bueno.
Now the Hornet does not have the worlds longest range (the joke was they needed tanker support in the pattern), and it has a reputation for being a bit squirrelly in landing and taxiing when land based due to that robust long-flex landing gear (that’s why the Blue Angels dropped the close-formation landings they used to do in their A-4s when they transitioned to the Hornet), but all in all I think the Hornet is a better choice than the Lawn Dart.
The Canadians and the Swiss are also retiring their Hornets as they buy F-35s, and maybe the Spanish too, so while there are not as many surplus Hornets as F-16s around the world, there are a fair number of non-used-to-death Hornets (i.e. not the airframes the USN and USMC bashed about until they were scrap).
In the interests of accuracy, the hydrazine H 70 used in the F-16 is not hypergolic, it is a monopropellant. Hypergolic fuel needs a separate oxidizer to ignite. H-70 is 70% hydrazine and 30% water mixed together in a stable, energy dense (thus small) mixture that contains its own oxidizer. When sprayed on a catalyst like iridium (in the F-16 EPU) it under goes a rapid (millisecond) reaction that produces a lot of heat and steam. The Typhoon and the U-2 also use H-70.
The youngest of the RAAF Hornets are 33 years old and these craft have used up 70% of their fatigue life, on average, in a salt water environment. They may no longer be well suited for the high G-force maneuvers required to dodge Russian AAMs and SAMs.
So the Aussies will give the F/A18s to Ukraine rather than scraping them?
Say you’re going to scrap them without saying that you’re going to scrap them.
With all the points made about maintenance, aircraft fatigue, air- and ground-crew training, in-flight handling, quality of Ukrainian airplane drivers, and various and varying Rooskie anti-aircraft measures, I’d be a tad surprised if these airplanes lasted 30 days after going on-line donning the blue and yellow. Whether the planes end up at an environmentally-approved aircraft recycling facility or in a medium-sized crater in a Ukrainian wheat field, they’re going to be scrap.
But the West will feel better about itself, and that of course is what really matters.
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This is a bad idea. The Canadians already bought a bunch of planes off the RAAF, presumably getting the ones in the best shape. these planes will be difficult and expensive to maintain, and not meaningfully more capable than the cheaper, more common F-16, which Europe is currently retiring in large numbers.
Also, while the USN has gotten rid of almost all of its legacy F-18s, the marines have a couple hundred left. they also don’t have super hornets and never have.
It looks like a lot of people who might refuse to actually believe anything the media has to say about Covid happily accept what they’re hearing from the media about the progress of war in Ukraine. I wonder why?
Why are any people eager for Ukraine to fight on in this charade of a war that was carefully designed by the leaders of the NATO countries to weaken Russia when anybody who follows the real news knows that the only side being in any way weakened at all is NATO? Western Europe has forfeited all large scale energy intensive production and of course has disposed of most of their stocks of weapons and ammunition already and none of them has even started to get interested in replacing all those anti-tank misisles, SAMs, and artillery rounds.
Anybody who thinks Russia is on the ropes from its special military operation is not really aware of the facts on the ground.
Boy does this make me feel OLD. I went to work for NAVAIR in June of 1981 as a contract specialist. One of the first training sessions I attended was on FMS sales and “offsets” as they were then called: the guy giving the training was the F/A-18 PCO and he used the Australian F/A-18 FMS as an example.
Now–forty years on–those planes I remember as state-of-the-art, brand-new, even not-yet-built, are going to the boneyard or being given away to a third-world country…crikey. :-(
I guess now I know how the WW2 guys felt when we were giving away our old DDs and DEs back in the day…
Ah well…rest easy, thou good and faithful servant!
It is truly bizarre to observe the way that Ukraine and Russia serve as a litmus test for objective sanity around the internet. You see someone who you thought was “on the right” come out for Putin, and you have to wonder just whose side they were really on, back during the Cold War. Russia has not changed its spots since the Soviet Union fell; it’s just gotten a lot better at appealing to the dumbasses who want to believe everything they’re spoonfed. Same with the idiots on the left who lap up every sounds-good thing they hear from their jornolist masters that tell them what to think about everything.
Ukraine ain’t a nation of saints, and the truth is, I have my issues with what they did back during the early days of the Obama Administration. The fact, however, remains that the majority of the Ukrainian people don’t want to live under the Russians, and that’s good enough for me. I don’t begrudge a damn thing we’re sending them, or a dime we’re spending, given the absolute crap we’ve dealt with from the Russians going back to Imperial times.
Not to mention the spoiler role they’ve played in dealing with things in the Middle East; I haven’t forgotten the convoys we watched the Russian embassy people escort across Iraq into Syria; I’ve not forgotten all the influence they peddled to shelter Iraqi regime members in Syria, or what they helped the Iranians do in filling Iraq with IED timers, EFP warheads, and all the rest of the things that got my troops killed.
Frankly, I look at what’s happening in Russia right now, and I’m grinning. Fuck Russia; fuck Putin, and that entire worthless-ass country. They’ve been behind the proxies killing Americans for my entire life, and it is sweet to see them dying in their thousands at the hands of some of their first victims. I’d happily support sending the Ukrainians everything they need to kill every Russian sonofabitch on their territory, and keep them out, just to teach those miserable pricks a goddamn lesson.
Fuck Russia. And, fuck anyone who supports them. They’re sorry-ass chiseling pricks that have screwed the world up for the last several centuries, and we’ll be better off when they’re all dead and buried with their bottles of vodka beside them. Nobody is going to miss Russia or Russians when they’re gone, which they’re handily accomplishing all on their lonesome selves.
Anyone who sympathizes with Russia? I can only hope you’ll one day suffer your own personal Bucha, when they come visiting.
Kirk –
Our President is a bought and paid for stooge of the Ukrainian Junta, established by a 2014 coup d’état conducted against the duly elected Ukrainian government by the CIA under the direction of Victoria Nuland. Rep. Comer’s FD-1023 hunt is about a $ 5 million bribe paid to our President (when he was Vice President) by the Ukrainian Junta. This same Junta set up President Trump for impeachment, with the capable assistance of the American IC community.
Putin has been observing American machinations in Ukraine and evidently reached the conclusion that they represent an existential threat to Russia. So he acted. Not full scale war, but a series of military actions intended to collapse the Ukrainian Junta. If Putin really wanted to wipe out Ukrainians, he would have unleashed his substantial arsenal of thermobaric weapons – or even nukes on the populace. Putin’s measured approach throughout this military action has produced a series of embarrassments which you and the IC have duly exploited to defame the Russians.
You should not be surprised that some “on the right” do not share your CIA distorted view of this conflict. It is based on lies and half truths.
“The youngest of the RAAF Hornets are 33 years old and these craft have used up 70% of their fatigue life, on average, in a salt water environment.”
According to this source, these planes have never been carrier based.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/australias-mothballed-f-a-18-hornets-should-be-given-to-ukraine
The F/A-18 may not be as maneuverable as the F-16 but it will likely never be employed in a dogfight by the Ukrainians and a Hornet delivered today is better than the promise of an F-16 delivered tomorrow.
One thing I don’t ever see mentioned : even experienced pilots coming from similar aircraft take time to get up to speed in a new airframe. This is not something that is going to change things up anytime super soon.
I have heard from several places that it takes six months to be trained into an airframe, but that is only for general use. Learning to actually be fully combat capable will take considerably longer. Add in the complexity of the fact that Ukraine still follows Soviet style air strategy, where they are pretty much fully tasked prior to the pilot ever crawling into the cockpit, and I think we have a situation where the new airplane cannot be utilized fully enough to get the result that most people are expecting.
Now if we are going to do the Soviets in Vietnam thing and quietly include some pilots along with the airplanes, all this goes out the window.
The RAAF Hornets were stationed at land bases within 10 miles of the ocean. This is considered a salt water environment for the purposes of assessing the corrosion of aluminum alloys.
Oh, I see how this works! There is no measurable difference between the corrosion that happens to a carrier based aircraft and one that is based 8 nautical miles inland but there is hella difference between the units purchased by Canada (and for which there are no reports of frame failures) and the remaining unsold units of corroded crap reserved for the unsuspecting Ukrainians.
“…There is no measurable difference between the corrosion that happens to a carrier based aircraft and one that is based 8 nautical miles inland but there is hella difference between the units purchased by Canada (and for which there are no reports of frame failures) and the remaining unsold units of corroded crap reserved for the unsuspecting Ukrainians.”
The Canadians got first choice; the pick of the litter. The RAAF decided to scrap the rest. You can bet that the RAAF would have preferred to sell the remaining aircraft to get greater returns, but couldn’t. Corrosion occurs over time and each RAAF Hornet had a unique corrosion history. Corrosion is a continuum which gets more severe over time. So Canadian engineers would have been able to select the least problematical aircraft.
Air streams plunging inland carry corrosive ocean salts inland. How much? Depends upon the weather, but salt air is progressively worse the closer you get to the ocean. Additionally, sands and other particulates from the Outback are also very corrosive because the ancient oceans that once covered the arid interior were saltwater which evaporated. The corrosion process is accelerated in hot environments. Australia is an environment unkind to aircraft. Probably why the RAAF selected a carrier aircraft in the first place.
The crashes of a 28-year-old F-15C in Virginia in 2014 and the break-up of another F15-C over Missouri in 2007 were primarily due to corrosion/fatigue (corrosion accelerates fatigue) in a fairly benign environment. 20% of the Marine Corps’ F/A-18 Hornets were grounded in early 2015 due to corrosion. Our combat aircraft support teams have a lot of experience detecting and repairing corrosion, but we still have crashes of three decade old aircraft. How much experience do the Ukrainians have?
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Eez gun eez not safe! Even as no gun can be made safe without defeating its purpose every other instrument of war comes with risks to its user.
If you are desperate to eliminate all risk you would not confront Russia’s expansion into your territory because you could get hurt doing so.
The real question is which risk is greater: air frame failure or the inability to contest Russian aviation advantages?
We see Russia arming its conscripts with Mosin-Nagant rifles that have been used with corrosive ammunition under wartime conditions. These rifles assuredly have pitted bores. We see Russia fielding rusty T-64 tanks which have been stored in open air depots for decades.
An F/A-18 that served as the RAAF’s test platform for glide bomb development and will likely be used primarily to launch JDAMs is undoubtedly “safe” enough for this role and functionally superior to the aforementioned Mosin-Nagants and T-64 tanks.
“Any stool in a bar fight” will yield superior results to using your bare hands.
The introduction of F/A 18s will marginally improve the fighting capability of Ukraine by giving them a platform that outperforms HIMARS, having the ability to launch glide bombs that rival HIMARS’ range and accuracy with a payload that is 4x greater.