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The Super Hornet is a completely different fighter from the Hornet

Why am I talking about U.S. Naval aviation while discussing the RCAF? The answer is simple. Both forces have the same missions, and operate in very similar threat environments. Both are required to surveil and defend a vast amount of battle space, and engage hostile fighters, bombers, and small radar cross-section cruise missiles in extremely harsh conditions.

In other words, the NORAD mission requires fighters with the ability to fly great distances and stay on station for a long time, with the right amount of signature reduction, integrated active defensive measures, Active Electronically Scanned Array radars, long-range infrared systems, and weapons.

For other missions, both the RCAF and U.S. Navy operate with international air forces to support combined and coalition joint operations. No air force fights alone—not the U.S. Navy, not the U.S. Air Force, and certainly not the RCAF. No one air force owns the compilation of capabilities required to succeed in today’s—and tomorrow’s—threat environments. In the U.S. Armed Forces, that capability resides in the air arm of all four services—the Air Force, Army, Marines, and Navy. They fight as a team. The RCAF is also a critical part of that team.

Purchasing legacy Hornets could pose many problems down the road

Some people—including representatives of the Canadian government and other public and private citizens—have called for the potential purchase of used legacy Hornets to address these needs. This could pose many problems down the road. First, it is increasingly hard to find spare parts for F/A-18A/B/C/D models around the world, and the cost to keep them flying continues to grow. Already military maintainers have been forced to cannibalize some jets to keep others in the air. And there are only so many times the lives of the current aircraft can be extended before putting the safety of pilots at risk. Second, these used legacy Hornets will still not provide the modernized fighter capability that the RCAF desperately needs to complete its mission. More fundamentally, legacy Hornets are rapidly losing their ability to counter the rapidly evolving Russian threat. For these reasons, the U.S. Navy is accelerating the retirement of its legacy Hornets, and replacing them with new and even more advanced Super Hornets.