US Navy prioritizes F/A-18 Super Hornet replacement in medium-range planning

Speaking at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium last week, the Chief of Naval Operations or CNO, Admiral Mike Gilday, specified the prioritization given to the major programs to come, over the period 2025-2040.

Thus, for the NOC, the first major equipment which will enter service, probably at the very beginning of the next decade, will be the replacement for the F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter-bomber, designated under the program code F/A-XX and resulting of the Next Generation Air Dominance program or NGAD US Navy version (and different from the NGAD of the US Air Force).

Following this, the DD(x) destroyers will enter service, which will take over from the Arleigh Burke Flight III destroyers on the production lines of American shipyards, and finally, beyond the middle of the 2030s, the new submarines SSN(X) nuclear attack sailors, replacing the Virginia-class SSNs currently in production.

Very little is known about the US Navy's NGAD program, the subject being marked with the seal of secrecy by the Pentagon, including its budgetary dimension for three years.

Beyond the arrival of the MQ-25 Stingray stealth tanker drones, which should reach full operational capability in 2025, and which should enable the Super Hornets and F-35C Lighting II of the American carrier air groups to significantly extend their autonomy and operational range, this program is based on a new fighter-bomber presented as belonging to the future 6ᵉ generation, such as the NGAD of the US Air Force and the European FCAS, as well as the fleet of combat drones and other Remote Carriers that characterize this new generation.

The device at the heart of this ambition, the F/A-XX program, should have the attributes of this new generation, namely extended passive and active stealth, a highly cooperative digitized combat system as well as improved performance, particularly in terms of range and payload capacity, compared to previous generation devices.

This new device, as well as its operational environment and its drones, will allow the US Navy to considerably increase the performance and capabilities of its carrier battle groups, or Carrier Group, by extending the effective range, but also the discretion, the density and the effectiveness of the air assets deployed.

This configuration responds to simulations around a potential conflict around Taiwan with the People's Liberation Army, each of which has shown that all American and allied air bases in the Western Pacific, in Guam and Japan, will be heavily preemptively struck by Chinese forces, rendering them inoperative for a significant period of time.

In this hypothesis, the Carrier Groups and the air groups that arm them, will therefore constitute the main short-term American response force to contain the Chinese offensive. This scenario, which is reminiscent of the one that was at the origin of the narrative basis of the book "Red Storm" by Larry Bond and Tom Clancy, published in 1986, which assumed the loss of Iceland by the NATO in conflict with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

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