10 American F/A-18 Hornet jets belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps will be landing at Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland this evening (Wednesday, 8th of May 2022).
The U.S. Marine Corps jets (and their supporting Hercules aircraft) are normally stationed in California and are heading on to eastern Europe to take part in various exercises.
The aircraft are estimated to arrive between 7pm and 8pm tonight.
Last month, USNI reported that a previous deployment saw a group of 10 Marine Corps F-18 Hornets, stationed in Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, S.C., and an unspecified number of Marine Corps C-130s also deployed.
The U.S. Department of Defense recently announced that it would send six U.S. Navy EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft, part of the ‘Garudas’ of VAQ-134 that is stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash., to Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany.
The previous deployment of aircraft will take part in continued deterrence efforts and help bolster NATO relationships, the U.S. military said in a statement.
“They are not being deployed to be used against Russian forces in Ukraine,” according to Kirby’s statement.
“They are being deployed completely in keeping with our efforts to bolster NATO’s deterrence and defence capabilities along that eastern front. The deployment is not in response to a perceived threat or incident.”
It is understood that this deployment is part of those efforts.
If there was a specific incident or threat I suspect the deployment would be a tad larger than the 10 ESMC aircraft enroute. Nevertheless, they are a welcome sign of the continued US engagement in NATO.
I bet they’ll welcome the leg stretch before flying on to Europe.
Cheers CR
On side note i see QRA South scrambled to off South West this morning anyone know why?
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=43c6a6
The cavalry start to arrive….
Russian T-62 (!!) tanks seen with new anti-Javelin turret armour in theatre
https://defence-blog.com/russians-equip-cold-war-era-tanks-with-improvised-anti-javelin-armor/
I am as unimpressed as I expect the tank crews are
No, those are sun shades to stop them overheating! 🤣
Hypersonic sun shields – new secret wonder weapon version. We need keep this quiet.
Alternatives made by Komrades by flattened shopping trolleys liberated from supermarket.
Was made in Dr Putin’s underground cave complex supervised by special white cat that runs everything.
Saw Top Gun 2 the other day, all about the F18, really impressed.
excellent cgi stuff on those su 57’s too! Great entertainment thought.
Always welcome, a more in-depth look at the latest upgrade to the fleet can be found via this link
“The new Block III Super Hornet promises to be as significant a jump in capability as the earlier transition from the Block I Hornet to Block II Super Hornet in the early 2000s.
As a result, the new F/A-18 Super Hornet (called the Super “Duper” Hornet by some) will join the Air Force’s new F-15EX Eagle II in serving as among the world’s most advanced non-stealth fighters in operation today.
In all, the U.S. Navy intends to purchase some 78 all-new Block III Super Hornets, while also upgrading its existing fleet of 550 or so jets to match.”
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/just-how-different-is-the-block-iii-super-hornet/
super dooper hornet…funny 😀
Very!
Guess that means don’t have much faith/hope for F-35C’s then? or they will end end like F-22 only few squadrons
A very good question Steve M, I received this reply today from Rfn Weston in relation to my question on rusting, depending on the cost to fix this problem and others, it will be interesting to see which way the US chooses to go?
There’s talk of a Sixth Gen. F/A-XX
“Hi Guys, I happen to know a fair bit about this side of things.
7085 has extremely good resistance to corrosion. It can be treated with an enhanced annealing/ageing process that refines the grain boundaries and increases the presence of low angle grain boundaries which are great for increasing resistance to intergranular corrosion and as a result – stress cracking. I’m sure Lockheed Martin is aware of this.
Aluminium oxide is white anyway… What you’re looking at is red rust which is basically iron oxidization.
I’d suggest it is a fault in the coating or environmental surface contamination that is flash rusting.
Think rail dust on your car. The substrate is in perfect order but the surface coatings have hot metal particles and debris that penetrate the coating surface and then rust, giving the impression of flash rusting.
Also, someone mentioned RAM contains ferrite… If the % weight content isn’t in the right percentage bracket – That’ll do it!”
No it doesn’t.
It just means that USN is going to keep using a mixed fleet.
As they always have…..
The Pentagon has dropped funding to procure more F-18E/F,’s in 2023.
There’s a separate project to bring Block II F18s to Block III standard.
Any 6th gen platform (which is very long way off) would replace the Super Hornet and compliment the F35C. Just like the USAF NGAD is to replace F22. Tempest would replace Typhoon. F35 will be in service for the next 40+years. But like all these 6th gen projects, none of them have yet to publicly revile a flying demonstrator or prototype. I really hope Tempest sees the light of day, but the cost is going to be huge. Radar 2 on Typhoon isn’t scheduled to be in service until 2030, so a 2035 timeline for Tempest looks rather unrealistic.
go Maverick!
Conformal tanks have since been abandoned from block 3 and won’t be fitted. Similar reasons why we won’t see them on Typhoon.
Anyone know their callsigns?
Bad day for Marines, it appears another V-22 down with causalities.
Noisy
Interesting that the block 111 F18E/F still uses the original 22,000 lb thrust engine. Seems odd not to up power the performance to better counter the SU 35 and 57 designs? I understand the fuselage barrel has restrictions, but the F16 PW was progressively upscaled to 32,500 lb thrust.
Anyone have some insight on this?
I think the block 3 Hornets engines are 15-20% more powerful, but I’m not certain on that. That’s only what I have seen on a CGI advertising graphic.