Talk:McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet/Archive 1

Archive 1

Cost

• The Amount of CF-18 Hornets is much lower now due to losses and upgrades. There is not somewhere between 80-85. 120 was the initial purchase.

The US F-18 costs 35 million USD per unit so how can the Canadian CF-18 Hornet cost 35 million canadian dollars? It must be more but I don't know the exact cost...:( I hope someone knows. Pseudoanonymous 16:53, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Canada ordered 138 Hornets (98 As and 40 Bs). As of 2003, 15 had been lost. Source: F/A-18 Hornet, The AirForces Monthly book of. My Jenkins Hornet book says Canada's Hornet contract was worth C$2.34B in 1977. Don't know if that includes parts & support or not. -Fnlayson 04:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Canadian defence procurement policy since World War II has been to include life cycle cost, such as spare parts, technical support, etc. This is from a book regarding Canadian defence procurement. ThePointblank 05:18, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

• OK, thanks. I've read that about Canada using life cycle cost somewhere. Maybe it was in a wiki article or something on the C-17. -Fnlayson 05:28, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Comparison

I'd like to see move a comparison between the Canadian and American versions. Marcus1060 07:18, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Update info

The initial purchase was for 138 planes.

The CF-18's cost 15 million USD. The CF-18B's cost approximately 15.5 million USD. The exact cost was not allowed to be made public because of specifics in American reporting rules. Canada paid much less than the Americans for the planes since they bought in larger numbers than the US Navy procurement procedures would allow. --Opitusflos 15:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

409

Should we put something to the fact that 409 just stood up and 441 and 416 no longer exist? We could put a list of inactive squadrons perhaps. Jeremy D. 07:49, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

433 does not exist anymore either. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cruzer117 (talk • contribs) 15:45, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Dummy canopy

I found the tidbit about the painted canopy very interesting as I have never read about anything like that before. So, do write more about it because I have no idea how it is supposed to work.

How it works is fairly simple, the concept is to momentarily confuse an opposing pilot during air combat, by making it difficult to determine which way the aircraft is heading. Normally, if you can see the canopy of an aircraft which is rolled into a turn it's turning toward you, with the dummy canopy it could in fact be turning away. This may delay the opponent in making a decision just long enough to give an advantage.

Storage

I moved this from the F/A-18 Hornet article for incorporation here. Hope to have integration completed within a week, but feel free to help out. - BillCJ 00:50, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

The Canadian government sought a New Fighter Aircraft (NFA) in March 1977 to replace its CF-101 Voodoo, CF-116 Freedom Fighter, and CF-104 Starfighter. The competition came down to the F-16 and F/A-18. Canadian Forces Air Command announced the selection of the Hornet on 10 April 1980, largely on the basis of the dual engines, which they believed to be a safer setup over the large isolated regions in Northern Canada. They purchased 98 single-seaters and 40 dual-seaters for 2,340 million in 1977 Canadian dollars, the single largest defense contract in Canadian history. They are largely similar to the A and B model Hornets then being produced by McDonnell, and designated CF-18A and CF-18B respectively (sometimes also referred to as CF-188A and CF-188B). The primary modification is a 600,000 candlepower spotlight fitted to the left side of the forward fuselage to aid visual identification.

The first CF-18 flew on 29 July 1982, and was delivered on 25 October. Eighteen Hornets from No. 409 Squadron participated in Operation Desert Shield, flying over 1,110 CAP and training sorties from Doha, Qatar. Supplemented by 26 Hornets from Nos. 439 and 416 Squadrons, the Canadians conducted CAP and escort missions during the Gulf War. They dropped some limited unguided and guided bombs but lacked the capacity to illuminate targets for laser-guided weapons. Though originally planned to be in service until 2003, the Canadians will need to extend the service of the CF-18 and have embarked on the CF-18 Incremental Modernization Project (IMP) to extend their service life until 2017-2020, primarily consisting of imporoved avionics to communicate with other NATO forces. The structural life will be extended under the International Follow-on Structural Program, in conjunction with Australia .

Canadian Hornet

Someone has deleted this without discussion:

The term CF-18 is actually a misnomer. The planes are technically designated CF-188 (the name Hornet not being used as there is no officially recognized French Canadian translation).

It is referring to a direct translation, as French for Hornet is Frelon. As written, I believe it is correct, but maybe we should reword it so as to be more clear. - BillCJ 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Armament

I'm confused by the list of armaments used by the CF-18. Listed among them are cluster mines and nuclear warheads. Canada does not make use of nuclear weapons. Also, if cluster mines are the same thing as air-dropped landmines, Canada's signing of the international landmine treaty strictly forbids the use of these weapons.

If someone could clarify where this list of armaments came from I'd appreciate it. Ve4cib 04:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The list of armaments comes from the F/A-18 Hornet page. The section can be revamped to be more reflective of CF service. ThePointblank 07:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Old Specs

I don't understand why there should be a section called "old specs". and any idea why some values are different? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TheGerm (talk • contribs) 15:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC).

I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that when the old specs were updated to the new format, there was some question as to which figures were correct. The best thing to do would be to check several sources, and use the ones that agree. THe old specs could then be deleted. - BillCJ 19:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Article Revamp

I've completely revamped the article to include more history of the New Fighter Aircraft competition. I've also done some minor highlighting of the service of the CF-18 in CF service. ThePointblank 07:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed you've removed source citations from the text, and added them to the external links, which you then placed under the references headings. That's not a good idea. We need to have ctiations after each instance in the text of the material being used, per WP:CITE. By the use of <ref></ref> tags, these will then be automatically listed under the References section by way of the <references/> or {{Reflist}} tag. Thanks. - BillCJ 07:25, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I was having trouble getting the stuff I was using as inline citation to format nicely with the older stuff. If you can change it so it formats better, go ahead and do so. ThePointblank 07:28, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

New Fighter Aircraft Program page

A new page has been established on Wikipedia for the New Fighter Aircraft program. As this ties into the CF-18 (as well as the aircraft it replaced, and the other aircraft that were considered for Canada's use), perhaps some of the material on this subject should be transferred or duplicated there. --64.201.38.62 13:48, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

• I copied that over. The New Fighter article has all the details now. The details in this article could be cut down now. -Fnlayson 15:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Requested merger

New Fighter Aircraft program → CF-18 Hornet

(See Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages for detailes on performing meregers.)

• Unneeded duplication - NFA program led to the CF-18 Hornet. No new developments likely to occur, as the program ended over 25 years ago. The CF-18 page is still relatively small compared to many fighter pages. Page was created without consultation of this page's regular editors - not a bad thing, but also no commitment to improve the new page. Creator of page is an new, infrequent editor, not likely to add more content there. The FNFA section in this page was cut back by a regular editor, but has continued to grow. - BillCJ 01:16, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Add  * '''Support'''  or  * '''Oppose'''  on a new line followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons.

Survey - Support votes

• Support - Per my nomination. - BillCJ 01:16, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Support - As articles stand now, I'm for merging. If the NFA article gets restored and expanded, NFA details should be removed from this article. -Fnlayson 02:15, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
• Support - Support. As the major editor of the section regarding the NFA, it really makes sense to merge the two as other aircraft articles do not separate the project that developed the aircraft from the article itself. It is instead part of the history section of the article. ThePointblank 04:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Survey - Oppose votes

• Oppose -

Discussion

• I did some work on the New Aircraft article. I thought it would get filled out some more and details in the CF-18 article section could be cut down. But that hasn't happened. I'm neutral on merging/redirecting right now. -Fnlayson 01:25, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• I did notice that, which is the primary reason why I didn't just merge it unilaterally. Not counting your edits, no regular editors have worked on it, and other edits have been infrequent. I think the NFA section here is actually longer than the new article, but this article is really over-long with it. But if someone has some more sources which can fill the NFA page out, then they aer welcome to try. The redirect and the history will be tehre for any future editor who wants to give it a shot. Canadian aircraft competitions have a reputation of becoming very contentious, and there may well be some notable evets worth covering related to this one. But for now, I think we're better severd combining the two pages. - BillCJ 01:40, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

The content should be exactly the same in both places except for the last paragraph or two. There's no point in going into CF-18 design changes in the NFA article. -Fnlayson 02:01, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• I support keeping this article separate and distinct from the CF-18 article. This article really overlaps the CF-101, CF-104, CF-5, and CF-18 articles, with further info on the other choices available to Canada at the time. Some of the content currently on the page (some specifically CF-18 details, like the details about Hornet/Frelon) should be put back on the CF-18 page. There is some content that could be added -- some more information on the evaluation of the various candidate aircraft, the Canadian evaluation of the F-17, industrial offsets, Canadian manufacturing partners, etc.--Voodude 21:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Contradtiction with the APG-65 page

This article contradicts the apg-65 page. Please see the talk:apg-65 page for details. Kitplane01 05:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

List of losses

Is the list of losses even accurate and worth keeping? --Steven 03:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Seems right to me. Ive been working on this jet for 5 years and know people who have been working on it for 20 and we all say its pretty accurate and up-to-date. 19:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• Not to be offensive, but I noticed something suspicious. On the list one of the Captains that died is named "Leaf Erickson"? Is this Accurate or do we have a Viking/History prank? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.247.232.99 (talk • contribs)
  • Probably vandalism. That was removed a couple days ago now. -Fnlayson (talk) 18:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

• • Leif Erikson is not a joke, his name was Mike Leif Erikson. Undone

• • Hi Guys, here is some pictures from the crash of 23rd July 2010. The 738 number is on the top of the right wing. --80.98.167.213 (talk) 21:58, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Wow, cheerleaders stage left!

This article completely glosses over the politicized and controversial history of the NFP.

The F-18 is simply not the perfect plane for Canada - although nothing would be. But the F-16 was clearly the aircraft we needed. It had better air-to-air, better air-to-ground, better systems and better range. The F-18 had to trade away many of the wins here in order to be carrier operated. Those changes add a considerable amount of weight to the aircraft, and for Canadian operations it's all dead weight. Hey, I'll never go against better landing gear, the AF's can't afford to write of landing incidents. But come on... the catapult hook? Let alone the arrester, folding wings and general up-gauging every bit of metal in the entire airframe. That we really don't need. What did we need? Well the AF said two engines, but even back then it was pretty clear that the single/double engine debate was really not what people thought it was ten years earlier. And even then, uhhh, F-18L?

The press was all over them about this. It was in all the papers and even on As It Happens. But there's not a single mention of this here.

Oh no, not here. Here it actually tries to say the arrestor hook is a good thing (umm: the F-16 has one too, and for what we're talking about here, it's exactly as good). And if someone can tell me exactly how all of the design losses due to having a folding wing are "useful when operating the fighters from smaller airfields", I'm all ears! Maybe if they had the god-only-knows amount of range they traded off for that, they wouldn't need to operate from them? Yikes! Maury (talk) 00:36, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Whoa, Maury! Please don't be inferring that editors have suppressed info unless you have strong proof that such suppression took place. You've been on WP for several years, and this article has been here for much of that time. You know as well as I do that WP articles are works in progress. So unless the info you say is needed has been deleted in the past, there's not been any action by anyone to suppress or delete any controversal info. So, get to work! And don't forget your reliable sources, and if you use anything from the "popular media", make sure you try to balance it out with cites from somone who actually knows which end of the plane the exhaust actually comes out. (Many in the Canadian media know absolutley zilch about military matters, although the US media is even worse!) Perhaps you meant your comments to be funny, but impuning editors who try to do their best to make the 5000 plus WP aircraft articles better isn't the way to do that. - BillCJ (talk) 01:52, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not claiming any "suppression", simply bias. This article reads like ad copy written by the AF. Maury (talk) 11:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

• Well, looks like CF web pages are some of the main references. The article needs more inline refs too. I've got a few books on the Hornet and none have much more detail on the CF-18 than this article, except for maybe the Jenkins book. If someone can find more info, that'd be great. -Fnlayson (talk) 13:15, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I think it's been addressed well enough in New Fighter Aircraft program. Unfortunately the copies of As It Happens are quite expensive, so that's going to have to wait. Maury (talk) 20:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

When I was in the CAF QTS I was performing quality assurance for the headsup display unit. During that time, I was informed by Ottawa that the CF18 folding wings was necessary to for the limited space found in hangers in the far north. Torontofred (talk) 15:19, 05 December 2010 (UTC)TorontoFred 05th December, 2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.147.22.76 (talk)

F-35 as replacement

I will point out that the F-35 is not considered to be the replacement for the CF-18; this is pointed out by former Assistant Deputy Minister (Material) of the Department of National Defence, Alan Williams in his book Reinventing Canadian Defence Procurement: A View From the Inside. Instead, he stated that the justification for the investment in JSF as presented to the Cabinet and the Minister of National Defence by him was instead economics; as the US stated that only companies allowed to bid on contracts for the JSF program were from nations that have put investment (as one of the tiered partners), the government of the day had fears that being shut out from industrial participation in such a large program could severely damage the Canadian aviation industry. The DND felt that through investments in the avionics and the airframe of the CF-18 fleet, they could keep the CF-18 serviceable until 2017-2020. ThePointblank (talk) 00:26, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

So what do they plan to replace the CF-18s with in around 2017? With the Canadian involvement in the JSF program, seems the F-35 will be the most likely candidate. It does not seem to matter much what's the primary reason and what's the secondary reason, unless you really want to get into all that in the article, imo. -Fnlayson (talk) 18:57, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, it is not too important for this article to say what might replace the CF-18 in some 10 years. Canadian Forces or Canadian Forces Air Command might be the place for that. -Fnlayson (talk) 19:18, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I think there will be a competitive tender; then who knows what will be the replacement. However, one will be the favoured candidate due to our involvement, but being selected is not a guarantee. ThePointblank (talk) 01:07, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

• OK, understood. Norway is doing contest/evaluation like that now with the F-35 and JAS 39 Gripen. Brazil and India are similarly looking for technology and economic gains from their fighter contests. Changed it back to your wording to be more neutral. -Fnlayson (talk) 03:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

F-35 as replacement, part 2

Hi there, you have removed much of the information I posted on 23 July 2010 about the decision by the Canadian government to purchase the F-35 as a replacement to the CF-18 fleet. As a result of this deletion you have removed the reference tags to DNDs website that updates and amends information contained in the CF-18 wiki article (costs, delivery dates).

Would like to have updated information and new section put back in to complete the lifecycle of the article / aircraft.

I agree some of the information was superfluous and from the dedicated F-35 page but do that find the information already there to be of a higher standard and more complete, although agree some details may be a bit much. In fact the information probably is more at home on the CF-18 page than on the universal Lightning page! Also I am not entirely sure readers interested in the CF-18, (especially in the future), should be required to read the much larger Lightning page to get the full story.

Perhaps this is a good time to open a new wiki page for the CF Lightning, the CF-135 (maybe)?

Thanks, J (81.154.176.137 (talk) 21:16, 25 July 2010 (UTC))

This is not the place for that. Much of that F-35 info was already covered at Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II#Canada. The main thing for the CF-18 in this article is that the F-35 is to replace it. The other F-35 details are not specifically relevant to the CF-18. -fnlayson (talk) 21:22, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

"This is not the place for that." Sounds rather unilateral and authoritarian. Your "decision" means many of the details in the CF-18 article re the Lightning II are incorrect / incomplete. I thought this was supposed to be a website for all well-meaning users to contribute to, not just you! Again, unnecessary and unfair to force readers to another site and then to muddle through excess information. It's not as it we are trying to save paper here. I'm not asking for the world, just for a better CF-18 page. Perhaps this page should be left open to Canadian aviation enthusiasts, who perhaps are looking for the full story. (i see you are living in the USA, and am surmising, perhaps incorrectly, that you are a US citizen. As a page dedicated to a Canadian military subject perhaps you are not the best person to make judgement on the soft details of the Canadian Forces, although your technical knowledge may be both excellent and usefull. Ultimately this page should be directed toward Canadians who are interested in CF aircraft. Interest among other parties is likely to be limited.

217.169.36.22 (talk) 09:44, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Fnlayson's nationality is immaterial to his right or ability to contribute to the article, and your being Canadian does not give you any more authority on the topic of the CF-18. Emphasis on "CF-18"; the article is not about the F-35, and Fnlayson was correct to remove non-relevant information, no matter how correct or useful it may be within Wikipedia as a whole. As he pointed out, Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II#Canada already exists for relevant details on the F-35 and any Canadian-specific detail. YLee (talk) 10:04, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

This article is about the CF-18/CF-188. So its main purpose to to cover that aircraft, not its replacement. That's why this is not the place to go on and on about the F-35. -fnlayson (talk) 12:26, 26 July 2010 (UTC)