And then they learned from that lesson and today they operate the F/A-18, which, if you count all of its variants, is one of the most successful naval aircraft of all time despite having a very ambitious multi-role mission.
> the F/A-18, which, if you count all of its variants, is one of the most successful naval aircraft of all time despite having a very ambitious multi-role mission.
How is it "successful"? Has one ever been in a real fight? Almost all of our airplanes are untested (which is a good thing).
Not like anyone's anxious to pull the P-51 or Spitfire out of mothballs, certainly.
While the Hornet doesn't have a huge combat record, it has a long flight record and a long record of carrier operations and has excelled at both with less maintenance burden than its predecessors.
I know many older maintainers who started out on the aircraft types that the F-18 replaced, and then worked on the F-18. They all say that the F-18 really was a game changer. Older aircraft had frustrating issues like panels from one aircraft not fitting onto another because those older aircraft were much more hand-made and manufactured to lower tolerances. F-18s leverage digital data buses much more, greatly reducing the messes of point-to-point wiring and patch panels that older aircraft types used, making the F-18 easier to maintain, modify, and expand.
