Her first act was to slash military spending by 50%, with the promise to the liberal groups that there would be more later. Boeing saw the handwriting on the wall, and immediately made their case to the Navy that they would only have money for one airplane, and they had the answer. They had secretly developed the F/A/R/S/E-18H. It was capable of performing all required missions by the Navy, including fighter, attack, recon, surface patrol, and electronic jamming. When asked by a reporter to sum up the F/A/R/S/E-18H, one Boeing employee was quoted as saying, "It's supercalafragalisticexpealadocious!". It was soon after named the Super Duper Hornet. The Navy was convinced, and ordered enough to equip 5 squadrons of 25 aircraft each, before more money was taken away. They retired all other aircraft in the fleet, with the exception of the helos and COD aircraft, although Boeing has promised to develop detachable rotor blades in the place of the dome and a towed delivery pod for supplies.
To keep some shred of decency, the first squadron to stand up was VFARSQ-14 Tophatters, the oldest Navy squadron, who turned in their tired old F-18E Super Hornets. Since their designation became cumbersome for maintenance crews to paint on the sides of the jets, they were redesignated V-14. They soon learned their new mount could carry a dizzying array of weaponry, including, but not limited to, a MAD boom pod, a TARPS pod with a refueling nozzle directly behind it, a LANTIRN pod and various other air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons. The only weapon it couldn't carry was the AIM-54 Phoenix, which the Tophatters discovered was a horrible oversight when their carrier, CVN-68 Nimitz, was blown out from under them during the third Persian Gulf war by Saudi Arabian cruise missiles after Hillary Rodham made an alliance with "the poor, picked on Saddam Hussien" against the "greedy, big-oil mongering Saudis", which is another story all-together. Thankfully, new elections took place, Hillary was banished to Iraq, and the world settled down again. In the end, the F/A/R/S/E-18H proved to be a dismal failure, and Boeing went belly-up, leaving Northrop/Grumman in a position to introduce the F-14X Tomcat II. Darren Roberts |
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Photos and text © by Darren Roberts