These are pretty expensive and specialized electronic warfare planes that are identical to a regular F18 in aerodynamic performance. Sucks to lose two of them for an airshow display. Isn’t that what the Blue Angels are for?
This actually begs the question...why the fuck would they use THESE for an airshow? They're aesthetically identical to F18 from a ground silhouette perspective. They blew through some really expensive planes from a much smaller fleet for a pony show that any regular F18 could've been part of.
They do training all day every day in these planes. Air shows are probably less exciting than the stuff they practice to do. Also, while they a generically '18's' they are EA-18g's and possibly have enough differences to require maintaining a separate NATOPs check from the other variants. (never flown one so I don't actually know though :). Either way, other than the blue angles who can't be everywhere and don't represent the diversity of platforms out in the fleet, there really aren't dedicated airshow aircraft out there.
Yah.. but between the Iran war and this, we've taken some EW losses. And it's not like this is one of the capabilities that we have massively overprovisioned.
The Blue Angels are the Navy's demonstration team. This accident happened at an airshow on an Air Force base. The Air Force's demonstration team is named The Thunderbirds.
Yea, that was my thought too. I can’t think of any reason you would reach for those two planes to assign to an airshow. And even if you did, why would you have two? And why would you have them flying anywhere near each other?
If the Internet is to be believed they're not actually more expensive than an F/A-18, and as far as military aircraft go.. not the most expensive. But a ~$150M accident is nothing to sneeze at.
Perhaps the internet price excludes the EW payload? Seems like a plane with a load of electronics gear and transmitters/antennas would cost more than the same plane sans that stuff?
I do not know the specifics, but I think most of the EW gear sits on pods attached to the pilons, not inside the actual plane. The only difference that I know of compared to a regular F18 is that it requires two crew members to operate.
Most of the Growler "magic" is in pods carried on external hardpoints, but you couldn't just upload the EW pods onto a FA-18F Super Hornet and have a Growler.
The cannon in the nose of a regular Hornet is replaced with computer hardware in the Growler. There are also aerodynamic changes to make it a little more stable so it's a better EW platform. There's probably a million other small differences too, enough that you wouldn't try to convert a -19F Super Hornet into a Growler (although the RAAF did think they'd try at one point).
What is the real purpose of airshows anyway? It always seems like very elevated risk for very little reward but I might just be missing what the reward is.
Too many comments are trying to overanalyze, or just show off their insightful cynicism.
We do airshows because they are cool. Lots of us love airplanes. Humans do all kinds of activities for entertainment that are not strictly justifiable returns on investment. I hope we never get that boring, though every year we do seem to go that direction.
It's worth questioning what the costs are, though. I love military aviation more than the average Joe, and seeing these jets pushed to their limits is pretty gratifying. But this isn't a football/soccer pasttime, the E/A-18 is an expensive F/A-18 block and the aviators are an asset of national security that take decades of experience and millions of taxpayer dollars to train. The losses sustained by the Blue Angels alone is stomach-churning, and they're widely known as one of the most professional groups around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Angels#Team_accidents_and...
The net benefit is marketing, and little else. As much as I enjoy watching airshow jet maneuvers, I have to acknowledge that the USSR only sent their Sukhoi pilots on-tour as a publicity stunt to increase their exports. Same goes for the US, France and China.
I guess aviation always has an element of risk and the real debate has to be around safety standards and training. A loss of aircraft, crew or worse people on the ground is never acceptable and seems to happen more than it should.
There are a LOT of air shows where military airplanes are a small or zero component.
I'm totally in agreement that armed forces are there for reasons you described. But an "air show" is a massive and sometimes separate Venn diagram. There are air shows where main thing is thousands of private airplanes coming from across the country to be together and meet up and have fun.
Put it other way, if armed forces decided it's not worth the recruitment investment and pulled out, air shows would still happen :). For most sizes air shows, the biplane aerobatic stunt done by a crazy local 50 year old real estate agent, is way more fun than the c5 galaxy transporter showing "short takeoff" :-)
Yah.. the roaring sound and precision of military aerial display teams can't be denied, and are an awesome experience. But it's something you see someone doing in a Pitts or Extra or maybe even a Citabria or 150 that makes you question your understanding of the laws of physics :D
I love it when there is a little Cessna 150/152 with aerobatic designation even though it's engine cuts off when you go inverted (carburated design). The sheer pluck of those pilots! I was once given a Cessna 150 aerobatic experience as a birthday gift and the pilot was just cheerfully mad lol. He gave me the parachute, told me we are legally obliged to wear them, but not to worry about it too much - at heights and speeds and Gs we're at, they're absolutely useless. Gulp!
It is not the same. Having a jet do a low pass is something that you will remember for a long time. Or having it go vertical with full after burners, especially close to sunset where you can see it better.
The other factor is showing how good you are: sure, you can do formation flying in an Extra 300 or a C150, but doing it in a fighter jet show precission and skill, because it will not forgive you as easy as a slower moving plane.
Even the airshows that the military flies at are often primarily civilian shows. The military clearly has recruiting and power demonstration goals but airshows in general exist outside of those goals. The majority of the aviators at these shows are civilian hobbyists.
I like air shows and there's no chance I'm enlisting. Maybe citizens like to see the cool toys they pay for actually do cool things other than seeing them parked in museums.
Sure, but the purpose is recruitment. They wouldn't do them if they didn't get anything out of them, and what they get out of them is PR and boosts to recruitment efforts.
I mean, also statistically, it is bound to inspire young people who potentially might be interested in picking an aviation related future. Maybe they will invent something they otherwise wouldn't have.
I don't understand this comment. If you want to be the minimally charitable + maximally accurate commenter your tone suggests, then you're also wrong.
It's a superset of the reasons you poorly articulated, and those reasons would include the fact it's cool. Cool things can help both recruitment and morale, and the US military seems to recognize that: https://armedforcessports.defense.gov/Sports/Esports/
If this is just meant to be another comment on the situation which comes with an implicit grain of salt, then the browbeating doesn't make sense.
Seeing and hearing the last remaining Avro Vulcan pull up over the chalk cliffs at Eastbourne a few years back is something I won't forget for a long time.
I’ve seen PdF perform, they are pretty impressive in the maneouvers they execute.
It is worth mentuoning though they do all that in trainer jets, not actual fighter jets. Which is not that cool. I would loved it more of they would fly actual fighters.
It has absolutely been a thing in Europe and there have been numerous accidents involving Russian and European aircraft at events like the Paris Airshow.
I remember going to an air show when I was 12 with a good friend. Walking through the C-5 and then seeing a thunderbirds display just captured my friends imagination in a way that’s hard to describe. He ended up becoming a Marine Aviator and basically started planning that path that day.
Presumably recruitment and PR for the air force, and morale for the aviators, as they can show off their training and skills to friends, family and the general public.
Acting as a sales platform for aircraft manufacturers is also a thing. The RAF Red Arrows are probably responsible for a load of sales of the Hawk advanced trainer they use in their displays.
For the audience - we love airplanes and love seeing them. I personally prefer the ground portion of air shows, where I can see and sometimes touch the airplanes up close, talk to the pilots and engineers, and generally have a nice day outside :). The aerial component is impressive too, depending on the show. Sometimes it's a bit drawn out.
For the organizers, typically it's a mix of profit and also organizer enthusiasm - a LOT of air show is basically hard-working volunteers.
For the participants, depends - the private entries are there for fun and visibility and showpersonship, cammarederie etc. The armed forces are there to promote and recruit and invoke patriotism and show off and impress.
Ultimately though, if airplanes aren't your kink, you probably won't emotionally / internally understand and that's ok. It's like world rally championship or formula 1 or anything redbull does, a risky entertaining spectacle.
It kind of is a miracle when you think about what goes in to creating those machines, maintaining them, and learning to fly them so well, of course crashes notwithstanding.
Crashes are rare. Exposure to the civilian for what their tax dollars are paying for, opportunities for pilots to become more skilled and train other pilots for advanced maneuvers. Things like that. Overall there’s not too much meat on the bone as far as criticisms are concerned.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make... are you saying that if anyone is killed in at accident at something, we should never do that something again?
Even more people died at the Hillsborough disaster than died at the Ramstein air show, so I guess we should never have sports events at stadiums anymore.
More people died at the Station Nightclub fire, so I guess we can never have nightclubs anymore.
I could go on and on. Yes, we should take all precautions and be safe as possible for events, but everything has some risk.
You can do advanced maneuvers without getting so close to another plane in some weird attempt at simulating a scenario that will never happen.
Did some cursory searches/math and it looks like about 1-2% of aerial shows in the US have a fatality (1-2 deaths annually with about 2000 shows on average over the last 20 years). If those numbers are correct (and they may very well not be as it’s a mix of LLM and Google quick searches) 1-2% doesn’t seem worth it.
Edit: I’m an idiot. .05-.1%. Seems a bit silly still but not as bad as I thought.
> You can do advanced maneuvers without getting so close to another plane in some weird attempt at simulating a scenario that will never happen.
That is likely true. However, it is a heck of a demonstration of pilot skill. The Blue Angels somewhat regularly post in-cockpit views of their airshow practice and it is wild how tight a formation they fly; I really recommend seeking out some of those videos, it is totally worth it. Well, for me at least :). It is not unheard of (but not common) for them to inadvertently make contact, since they fly like 18 inches apart, but given they have nearly identical vectors it does not often result in a crash.
You might want to double check that LLM... If theres 2000 shows and 1-2 deaths, that's 0.05%-0.1%. still too high, but given the simple math error I think the other numbers are probably suspect too
I'm sure there's some bean-counter calculus involving recruitment, PR, demonstration of capabilities, they were going to be doing training flights anyway so why not do a few in public, etc. but they're more rationalisations rather than reasons.
I hope it stays that way too. A world where we take everything away unless it fits into the 5 year ROI spreadsheet sounds dreadful. In any case there'll a long tail of nth-order outcomes that we can't simply reduce down to a risk-reward calculation.
There's probably some deep reason why humans just have a drive to show off their awesome stuff.
This is a question that comes up internally as well. It gets into questions like "Why do we fund the Thunderbirds etc". I will hold off on my 2c because the arguments are already covered!
Immediately after a show like this, yes, it looks foolish to lose 2 combat planes and almost 4 aircrew for a performative event. Looking at it more generally, it's a tradeoff.
For recruitment, awareness, to boost civilian confidence/engagement/support in the military as a whole. The blue angels and thunderbirds are the best of the best when it comes to air shows because the best pilots are used and they train extensively.
All I know is I’m glad I don’t live in the world where this kind of reasoning dominates. All the greatest things I’ve seen in my life have been arguably pointless in this way.
Posturing, showing of your military capabilities towards the enemy. Raising morale (aka war propaganda) towards your own population.
Contrary to popular belief, war is mostly about public opinion, not raw strength. Even since (before) roman times, you almost never fight to the last man, you fight until you route the enemy.
I'm not sure on the history of why there's a Growler display team, but they regularly perform at air shows, even air shows where the Blue Angels or Thunderbirds are also performing. Their display isn't formation aerobatics, more a sort of fancy fly-by.
Air force, Navy and Marines have many display teams in addition to the two everyone knows. E.g. there's an F-35 display team and an F-22 display team. Usually they fly single though.
If the plan was to demo the Growlers team then calling the Blue Angels makes no sense, that’s a completely different team on completely different aircraft. You can still demo them with reduced risk like avoiding flying close profile.