Australia — 6 New Boeing Super Hornets Join Royal Australian Air Force Fleet

RAAF BASE AMBERLEY, Queens­land — Six new Boe­ing [NYSE: BA] F/A‑18F Super Hor­nets arrived at Roy­al Aus­tralian Air Force (RAAF) Base Amber­ley on July 6, expand­ing the RAAF’s fleet to 11 next-gen­er­a­tion, mul­ti-role air com­bat air­craft.

F/A‑18F Super Hor­net Source: Boe­ing Click to enlarge

The RAAF’s first five Super Hor­nets arrived in Aus­tralia on March 26. 

“With the arrival of these six new Super Hor­nets, we will con­tin­ue to broad­en our train­ing as we pre­pare to achieve Ini­tial Oper­a­tional Capa­bil­i­ty lat­er this year,” said Group Capt. Steve Rober­ton, Offi­cer Com­mand­ing 82 Wing, which includes the Super Hor­net and F‑111 air­craft. “Our air­crews and sup­port teams con­tin­ue to be very impressed with the Super Hornet’s remark­able capa­bil­i­ties, per­for­mance and reliability.” 

Aus­tralia announced in March 2007 that it would acquire 24 of the advanced Block II ver­sions of the Super Hor­net, all of which are equipped with the Raytheon-built APG-79 Active Elec­tron­i­cal­ly Scanned Array (AESA) radar. Boe­ing will deliv­er Australia’s 24th Super Hor­net in 2011. The first 11 were deliv­ered ahead of sched­ule and on budget. 

“The Super Hornet’s proven tech­nolo­gies — includ­ing its ful­ly inte­grat­ed AESA radar, advanced sen­sors, two-engine design and net­work-cen­tric data-shar­ing envi­ron­ment — are pro­vid­ing the RAAF with a broad spec­trum of new capa­bil­i­ties,” said Car­olyn Nichols, Aus­tralian Super Hor­net pro­gram man­ag­er for Boe­ing. “The RAAF Super Hor­nets enable the two crew mem­bers to con­duct simul­ta­ne­ous air and ground oper­a­tions with unprece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion­al awareness.” 

The Boe­ing Super Hor­net is a mul­ti­role air­craft, able to per­form vir­tu­al­ly every mis­sion in the tac­ti­cal spec­trum, includ­ing air supe­ri­or­i­ty, day/night strike with pre­ci­sion-guid­ed weapons, fight­er escort, close air sup­port, sup­pres­sion of ene­my air defens­es, mar­itime strike, recon­nais­sance, for­ward air con­trol and tanker mis­sions. Boe­ing has deliv­ered more than 430 F/A‑18E/Fs to the U.S. Navy. Every Super Hor­net pro­duced has been deliv­ered on or ahead of sched­ule and on budget. 

A unit of The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is one of the world’s largest defense, space and secu­ri­ty busi­ness­es spe­cial­iz­ing in inno­v­a­tive and capa­bil­i­ties-dri­ven cus­tomer solu­tions, and the world’s largest and most ver­sa­tile man­u­fac­tur­er of mil­i­tary air­craft. Head­quar­tered in St. Louis, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is a $34 bil­lion busi­ness with 68,000 employ­ees worldwide. 

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Con­tact:

Philip Carder F/A‑18 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty +1 314–234-6516 philip.b.carder@boeing.com

Mary Ann Brett
Inter­na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions
Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty
+1 314–234-7111
mary.a.brett@boeing.com

James Bak­er
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor
Boe­ing Defence Aus­tralia
+61 7–3306-3411
james.m.baker9@boeing.com

Press release
Boeing