This is a series of CBSi and the world. I'm John Bachelor. Gordon Chang at

Gordon G. Chang, my colleague and co-host and we turn to James Holmes of the US Navy War College

to help us understand new technology in the US Navy. It is critical in the face

off with the adversaries in the Pacific and the Atlantic.

This involves an aircraft, the A.F.A. 18 Super Hornet, and a new weapon for it. First, Jim a very good evening to you. Thank you

for this. What is the Super Hornet? How is it used? Where is it? Good evening to you.

Hey Gordon, hi John. Always a is it's basically

basically been sort of the workhorse aircraft is a it's it's basically been sort of the

workhorse aircraft for carrier for carrier wings since about the minute about the mids. I don't I don't remember exactly when it originated. It was an evolution out of the 1980s

Hornet, F18 Hornet, which was a predecessor for that. So it's an F&A, which means it's both a fighter and an attack aircraft,

and so it does air-to-air missions and it also can attack targets on the surface,

whether it's a hostile fleet or whether it's forces on

forces on land. So again, it's been sort of the standard platform for

quite some time. It's starting to get it's starting to give way to to stealth aircraft. The F-35C is a stealth platform.

It looks like we'll have sort of a hybrid fleet merging non-steelty and stealthy platforms

into an airwaying for quite some time to come, but we're sort of in a time of transition.

So it's on the fleet now and it's widely accepted as our premier combat plane off of a carrier. Is that correct, Professor?

Yeah, sure. I mean, look at Top Gun Maverick, I mean, that's exactly what Maverick had under his control.

He alluded at the beginning of that film to the F-35 but then so that was that it was

making its way out to the fleet but but again this is this has been the sort of the

coin of the realm for a very long time at this point.

Gordon you have a question.

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