Profile: Super Hornet

As starts go, it’s hard to imagine how things could have been much worse for the F/A-18F Super Hornet before it entered the RAAF’s fleet. Then defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon was certainly not a fan. “I have made it clear,” he thumped in 2008, “that in the end, if the advice comes to me from the review that the Super Hornet is not up to job, I would have no hesitation in cancelling it.”

It was one of many bad write-ups the aircraft suffered after it was declared a stopgap between the retirement of the RAAF’s Classic Hornets and the delayed arrival of their true successor, the fifth-generation F-35. What was the point, critics argued, of a freelance fighter in our fleet? 

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