Super Hornet F/A-18XT orders being considered
 

President Donald Trump on Friday announced he’s considering a “big order” of advanced Super Hornet fighter jets designated F/A-18XT and made by Boeing Co :https://www.dodbuzz.com/2017/02/17/t...navy_170221.nl

I think this is the way to go ... I love the F-35 JSF for sure, but these Super Hornets are the way to go for the near future.

Perhaps they could even develop a way to spot a periscope and transmit it to a fleet of Super Hornets on stand-by. :yep:

According to what I can find on google, the current USAF F-15/-16 inventory is 1406. F-22 is 195. Planned F-35 is 1763.

The USN and USMC together have 929 F/A-18's and 111 A/V-8's. Planned F-35 is 789.

So overall, 2552 F-35's and 195 F-22's will be around replacing roughly the same number of the older aircraft.

Yes, that's a lot of advanced fighters but for how much those things cost and politics, labor, etc....It will be a while before our inventory of advanced fighters is up to what we want. Unfortunately we can't just stamp out war machines out of metal anymore. There's plans to keep the older aircraft like the F-15 in service and there's already a bunch of USN/USMC aircraft grounded and the USAF is short a lot of pilots.

I think we need something, but we're having problems maintaining what we have and we still have aircraft from the 70's and 80's doing most of the work. I think more changes than just the aircraft will have to be made in all the branches planning on taking aircraft development further. This F-18 might be what we're looking for as far as the USN/USMC carrier aircraft go.

Something that's capable but cheaper to fill the gap so we can figure out our fancy stuff.