Originally Posted by
USMCFLYR
The Hornet fleet is averaging between 5,000-7,000 right now depending on model. Four things kill a Hornet: 1) Pure hours (10,000 is the newest number), Landings (17,000 is what I was told last night), Cat/Trap (you should see how quickly the Navy scarfed up the older Marine planes with no cat/traps) and 4) basic fatigue (pulled so many G's over time)
Now I don't know what the average F-15/F-16 airframe life is out there; but if in the above highlighted quote you were including USN/USMC fighter aircraft then we haven't even broached the subject of how many hours the F-14 had on them!
It is tough to make some of these comparisons but I will give it a shot from the F15 side. From 92-96 I was stationed at a base with a/c bought during the 85-86 FY. Two of the three squadrons sent jets to Desert Shield / Storm and all the rotations afterwards. Those tails started to hit 4 & 5 thousand hours in the 95-96. What they have now is unknown. By comparison Eagles bought in FY 78-79 that we are just now getting on our ramp have 6-7 thousand hours on them. The jets we are retiring are 75-76 FY jets and they have 5-6 thousand on them. Some bases / a/c did lots of SWA flying while others did just training or minimal rotations.
I think our airframe life is sitting at 7.5k, which is up from 5k at time of production. If I know the USAF they will up the limit again when needed to keep jets flying. Thank God the MacAir engineers designed a plane then added 10% just to make sure.
I guess for the Hornet fleet you would have to look at the amount / percentage of flying actually used for taskings over Iraq. I know that the USN flies at a higher rate than the USAF partly due to requirements for or around the boat. My above comments showed how things compared for the Eagle with jets that went to the desert vice those that didn't.
Wasn't the Tomcat made up to 1990? I'm not sure it would be a good example as it's production life was long with not that many made (or at least it would be a difficult comparison at best).
Biff