by DAVID AXE

In late 2002, the U.S. military was mobilizing for war in Iraq. In a rare move, the Navy activated one of its reserve fighter squadrons—VFA-201, flying early-model F/A-18 Hornets from Fort Worth, Texas. VFA-201 launched 210 strike missions from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, dropping 110 tons of ordnance on Iraqi targets.

It was a triumphant deployment for a reserve squadron. Reserve units are less expensive than their active counterparts and arguably less glamorous. They include many part-time personnel but also possess, on average, older and more experienced people. But the Navy’s reward to the hard-fighting VFA-201, just four years after it pummeled Iraq, was to shut it down—part of deep and ongoing cuts to the reserve branch.

Today the Navy Reserve has four fighter squadrons—two with F/A-18As and two with F-5s. Both of the F-5 units and one of the Hornet units are strictly non-combat organizations. They fly “aggressor” missions, simulating enemy fighters in mock air battles with other squadrons.

VFA-204—the “River Rattlers,” based in New Orleans—is the only reserve fighter squadron with a combat role. It’s fighting to avoid VFA-201’s sad fate … and thus save the reserve’s war-ready jet fighters from total extinction.

But the sailing branch’s top brass seem ambivalent toward the squadron’s struggle.

Like many military reserve units, VFA-204 operates old, second-hand warplanes. Its dozen twin-engine F/A-18As rolled out of McDonnell Douglas’s St. Louis factory between 1989 and 1991. They’re some of the oldest fighters in the Navy—and badly outdated.

As originally built, early Hornets were good for 6,000 flight hours. The Navy and Marines have already extended that to 8,000 … and are trying to add another thousand hours, in order to keep at least some of their roughly 600 first-generation F/A-18As and F/A-18Cs in the air until 2030. Adding the extra hours requires a Hornet to spend as long as a year in deep maintenance.

“We’re in uncharted territory, trying to coax another 1,000 hours out of jets that already have been overflown by 2,000 hours,” Cmdr. Brian Hennessey, then the River Rattlers’ skipper, explained in 2013.

Even with the life-extension, half the River Rattlers’ Hornets will age out between 2018 and 2022, according to a presentation by Rear Adm. Mark Leavitt that War Is Boring obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Leavitt is the chief of the Navy Reserve’s flying squadrons. He warned that all of VFA-204’s F/A-18s will be “dead” by 2028.

The old Hornets also lack the latest weapons, software, electronic protections and communications that the Navy’s other fighters possess. The River Rattlers’ F/A-18s are so outmoded that America’s regional commanders have stopped including them in normal war plans—they’re too vulnerable.