Super Hornet offered to Indian Navy
On 30 May 2017, at a two- day seminar on ‘ Building India’s Future Navy,’ Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sunil Lanba, noted that the Navy’s Request For Information ( RFI) regarding 57 ‘Multi Role Carrier Borne Fighters’ (MRCBF) had received responses from four foreign OEMs. Naval officials later confirmed that these were RAC-MiG, which has already supplied 45 MiG-29K/KUBs to the Navy, Dassault with the Rafale M, Boeing with the Super Hornet and Saab with the Gripen Maritime. Admiral Lanba also re-iterated his hope to see the programme was completed within “the next four to five years” (i.e. by 2021-2022), and stated that IAC-1, which would be the first IN carrier to operate the MRCBF, was expected to enter sea trials in late-2018 or early-2019, before being commissioned and worked up to operational status over the next few years.
The MRCBF RFI broadly called for a day/night and all-weather capable fighter, to be employed for Air Defence (AD), Air to Surface Operations, Buddy Refuelling, Reconnaissance, and Electronic Warfare (EW). The document also made clear that the MRCBF would be required to operate from the STOBAR IAC-1 and CATOBAR IAC-2.
Boeing’s Dan Gillian, Vice President, F/A-18 and Electronic Attack programmes at Boeing spoke on ‘Transformation in Aviation Sector: Challenges and Opportunities for the Aerospace Industry’ at the seminar in May, making a detailed presentation on ‘Next Generation Carrier Base Figthers,’ with a focus on the Company’s Super Hornet offering, in particular the recentlyapproved Block III configuration. The new specification, according to Gillian, “enhances the existing Block II’s survivability by including an advanced cockpit system, long-range detection with Infrared Search and Track and longer range with conformal fuel tanks.” He also noted that Boeing “can and will improve the Super Hornet’s stealth performance as part of this package.” Opining that fighters of the future will need to be “networked and survivable,” Gillian highlighted the ability of the Block III Super Hornet “to be a ‘smart node’ on the network” with new capabilities being incorporated from the EA-18G Growler programme, such as a new computer, the Distributed Targeting Processor-Networked (DTP-N), and a new high-bandwidth data link called TTNT.