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| F/A-18E Super Hornet launching from the Aircraft Carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Joe Gould
WASHINGTON —The US Navy is planning to request 12 more F/A-18 Super Hornets than the two it was allocated in the president’s 2017 defense budget, according to a House lawmaker.
Citing overtaxed naval aviation assets, Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., and Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., asked the House Armed Services Committee to consider adding the aircraft through the 2017 defense policy bill expected to be drafted over the coming weeks. The chief of naval operations, Wagner said, will place the 12 aircraft on the service's unfunded requirement list.
“There is still a potential gap this year,” said Wagner, whose district is near where Boeing assembles the aircraft in St. Louis.
“Given the critical capability that the Super Hornet provides for ongoing wartime operations, any shortfall is dangerous to the Navy’s ability to project force throughout the world,” Wagner said. “This unfunded requirement request helps mitigate that shortfall, anticipating the Navy will follow through on its promise to add aircraft in the next year’s budget deliberations.”
Bost, whose district borders St. Louis, called the procurement of added Super Hornets, “critical to meeting the anticipated needs of the United States Navy and to keeping the production lines open as the United States prepares anticipated aircraft sales to allied nations.”
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