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Comment by CH1jZci6jV | Hacker News Reader

I served in the last F-14 squadron, VF-31. When President Bush landed on our carrier (Mission Accomplished!) they had the inferior F-18s in the background for the political shots. We were told that was because the US taxpayers would be pissed if they knew how ripped off they got for the F-18, which was replacing the F-14 in all of the squadrons.

This might be just F-14 bravado, of course, but I do also remember that like the second week of "shock and awe" (the initial Iraq campaign bombing) they stopped all F-14 flights for the same reasons. F-14s were trouncing the sorties of the F-18s, even though we were one squadron vs four or five of their squadrons, because we were the only jets capable of actually reaching Bagdad from the carrier and we were able to convert our bombs to "smart bombs" much faster (F-14s break a lot more so our techs were more skilled).

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By the time of the second gulf war, the F-14D cost 20% more per unit than the F-18E, and some 80-100% more to maintain. I'm not sure how you're concluding that the taxpayers were ripped off by that.

Also, didn't we have airbases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? Why were we relying on carrier aircraft for bombing Bagdad when we could have been using F-15s and F-16s?

> By the time of the second gulf war, the F-14D cost 20% more per unit than the F-18E, and some 80-100% more to maintain. I'm not sure how you're concluding that the taxpayers were ripped off by that.

He/she isn't concluding that, they are repeating what they were told at the time.

When you evaluate cost effectiveness you have to look beyond unit cost to what capabilities and effects the taxpayers actually get for their money. The F/A-18E/F is pretty good at short range strike missions, but it has less range and requires more tanker support for longer range missions. It's also generally inferior for the fleet air defense mission, especially compared to a notional "Super Tomcat 21" equipped with a modern AESA radar. Fortunately the US Navy hasn't had to actually defend a fleet from air attack since the Vietnam War, so the Super Hornet deficiencies haven't really bitten them (yet).

90% of the roles that we used carrier aircraft for 40 years ago are now fulfilled by a combination of Drones, Cruise Missiles, SAMs, and CIW Systems. I'm not even convinced we really need the Super Hornets anymore, it seems like we're holding on to them for the 1 in a million "just in case" scenarios.

If the squadron really was doing the work of 4-5 F-18 squadrons, costing 20% more to build and 100% more to maintain would make them much more cost effective plane.

>Also, didn't we have airbases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait?

Yes, I believe Al Jaber Kuwait had already constructed one of the largest post-Vietnam expeditionary airfields* with multiple US squadrons (including F/A-18s) present before the war officially began.

* "Expeditionary Airfields (EAFs) are portable airfields that can be constructed, used, broken down after the completion of a mission and moved to another site for re-use."[1]

[1] http://www.cassholdings.com/AM2.htm

What was the feeling from the squadrons on the whole "Mission Accomplished!" political chaff after the fact?

I heard the banner was pre-planned by the ship as a celebration for the completion of the cruise, but then it was prominent in the photo ops and Bush got attacked as though he were celebrating victory in Iraq.

Curious on thoughts from someone who was there, or if you all even had opinions about it afterwards.

Excellent question. I worked in politics after the military and when I was in the West Wing during the Bush admin it came up once! They said the same thing, that it was the ship's idea. I reminded them that aircraft carriers don't have printing presses so it would be a little hard for the sailors to put that kind of banner together.

It could be that the ship's leadership wanted something like that (they are politicians too). But at least in my squadron we were all furious the president was coming because we had been out at sea for the longest nuclear and F-14 cruise of all time (10 months) and we just wanted to go home to our families but now we are delayed another week for a political stunt and have to spend the next two weeks cleaning the ship in preparation.

It's fun to have been a part of history in that way though. And when I have some kind of career advancement I always throw up a "mission accomplished" banner as a joke.

290 days with prep for a presidential visit at the end is a helluva deployment. Nice to see Wikipedia records the sacrifice: https://web.archive.org/web/20120328094805/http://www.av8rst... And looks like the captain made flag, so apparently someone was happy. ;)

> F-14s break a lot more

Pretty sure this is the answer lol...

F-18s def are lower maintenance overall but they couldn’t go very far (important when your ship isn’t docked in Bagdad) or drop bombs in adverse weather so not very useful during a war. Doesn’t mean they are not politically useful, though. One part is made in each congressional district on purpose.

Is that the case with Super Hornets too?

Yes, the 18s and 16s have relatively low fuel capacity in comparison to the 14. The F-35 finally improved on tank capacity quite a bit.

Super hornets have about 100mi shorter combat range than the Tomcat. That said they are capable of buddy air-air refueling so that can extend their range by a bit (at the cost of an extra pilot, airframe, and associated costs which doesn’t get to carry a useful payload).

I’m not sure “F-14s break a lot more so our techs were more skilled” speaks too well of the aircraft in the long run…

True but the F-18s simply couldn't do many of the jobs at all. I obviously have a bias but I think it is very plausible that politics had a lot more to do with it than maintenance.

How sophisticated was the AA threat over Baghdad on the initial wave?

I think we thought they were a lot more sophisticated than they actually were. But shock and awe was designed to basically neutralize all of that anyway. The Navy was the night shift and that included a lot of tomahawk missiles too. The Air Force was the daytime campaign so there was a lot of capability to take out different threats.

The biggest threat I remember was we were very sure Saddam had chemical weapons (mostly because we sold them to him previously, but I digress). So we had to carry gas masks and did chemical attack drills alot. We also were forced to take many shots including small pox and an experimental anthrax shot. Many of my friends have medical conditions they believe are related to those shots.

Surprising re shifts! More recently, the Navy has been biased towards day shifts due to carrier landing windows. My understanding is a big part of the Navy training/brief/debrief focus is the recovery.

There's a big difference in number of personnel involved and how important equipment (radar, IFF, landing systems) are for daytime vs nighttime recoveries.

Being on the ground and dealing with MOPP gear was no fun either. The Army certainly took the risk very seriously. The MOPP gear receded into the background on later deployments. While all the shots may be a slight concern, I am more afraid of breathing in all the invigorating air from the burn pits.

The Operations Room has an excellent, very detailed breakdown of the events of Desert Storm: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLErys4h2oiuyKCuzZhpHh...

Out of curiosity was this the F18 Hornet or the F18 Super Hornet?

Both but I think the superhornets will still under warranty so they even had not military techs who would fix them.

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