Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet in Australian service

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article promoted Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:35, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet in Australian service[edit]

Nominator(s): Nick-D (talk)

This article describes the acquisition and service history of the Royal Australian Air Force's main fighter aircraft since the 1980s, including the role of one of the three Hornet-equipped squadrons in the Iraq War. I started this article as a bit of an experiment to see how much could be written on the service history of a single aircraft type in a single air force, and have been surprised at just how much there was to cover. The article passed a GA nomination in April, and has since been considerably expanded. As such, I think that it now meets the A class criteria. I'm hopeful of further developing this article so it meets the FA standards, and would appreciate any suggestions on areas which need improvement. Thanks in advance, Nick-D (talk) 11:02, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support -- Heh, I well remember the hoopla surrounding the Mirage replacement as a young teen, having endless discussions with Dad about what we should get, and being a bit disappointed that the one we ended up with wasn't Mach 2 capable...! Once the first deliveries arrived, however, and I saw one doing circuits with a Mirage at Richmond or Schofields, and the Hornet was almost skidding into its turns as opposed to the relatively gentle cornering of the Mirage, my doubts vanished... ;-) Anyway, on to the review proper:

Refs, images, structure and detail look fine. Re. the latter, I was kind of expecting a very long article, and am glad to see it's in fact quite succinct without appearing to miss major details (I might skim my copy of McPhedran's 2011 book to see if there's anything worth adding).
Prose-wise, very good, pls check I haven't inadvertently altered any meaning with my copyedit. A few queries came to mind, none of which necessarily require alterations to the article:
- The Tornado was excluded as it was principally a strike aircraft and had limited air-to-air capability -- When looking at the reasons for pursuing the US aircraft and rejecting the UK and European ones, do any of your sources go into the US designing with air superiority in mind, vs. the air defence philosophy common to the UK and Europe?
  - No, they don't really explain this in detail. The European designs appear to have been regarded as being either too specialised in their various roles, or technologically inferior to the US alternatives. The Tornado was clearly a non-starter given its air-to-air capability was limited to Sidewinder missiles carried for self-defence (the ADV variant didn't come along until later, and not even the RAF seems to have regarded it as being truly satisfactory). The Mirage 2000's avionics were its weak point, though the cockpit design was also regarded as being unsatisfactory (something several sources note was common of European aircraft). Nick-D (talk) 11:48, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - I think the US planes were always considered superior as dogfighters... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:12, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- RAAF pilots tested United States Air Force (USAF) F-16Bs in 1979 and 1980, and reported that the aircraft had excellent performance but could be difficult to control at times -- I recall one of the things that made the F-16 different was a small sidestick control as opposed to the usual central joystick; was this anything to do with that?
  - From memory, the source states that the aircraft were found to be overly unstable in flight. Given that this was one of the first 'fly by wire' designs, I presume that the designers were still in the process of getting the controls right. Nick-D (talk) 11:48, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Well, yeah, that was the point -- make the plane deliberately unstable so it could be flung round the sky better, and use computers to keep it stable in normal flight, but perhaps they were indeed still finetuning that. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:12, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- The RAAF's order of 75 Hornets comprised 57 single-seat "A" variant fighters and 18 two-seat "B" variant operational training aircraft -- Do the sources mention the % commonality between the A and B models, and/or the % effectiveness of the B model in combat vs. the A model? I seem to recall this being mentioned at the time...
  - The sources only describe the B variants as being used as operational trainers unfortunately, and don't comment on their combat effectiveness. Nick-D (talk) 11:48, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Memo: must dig out my old Pacific Defence Reporters from the time and see if they mentioned it... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:12, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- The Government sought to use the Mirage III replacement program as a means to increase the capacity of Australia's manufacturing industry -- Just checking whether "capacity" is precisely what's meant, or is "capability" closer?
  - The latter - I've just tweaked this.
- These aircraft remained in the United States until May 1985, however -- Was a reason given? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:46, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - They were retained for trials purposes. However, that's from McLaughlin (2005) which I don't own, and I'll need to visit the library to add it to the article; hopefully I'll have time to do this over the weekend. Thanks a lot for your copy editing and comments Ian. In regards to your initial comment, when I was about ten I had a brochure from the RAAF which set out the specifications of its aircraft, and I remember being perplexed at why the new F/A-18s were slower than the old F-111s! Nick-D (talk) 11:48, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Yeah, speed always seems more important when you're young... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:12, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      - Yep! I've just added some material on what the two Hornets were doing in the US (as well as a paragraph on the weapons the Hornets use). Nick-D (talk) 08:19, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Support: good work with this article, Nick. I'm confident that it meets the A-class criteria and am happy to support its promotion. I have a few observations, though:
- no dab links, ext links all work;
- images appear correctly licenced;
- images lack alt text, you might consider adding it in (suggestion only);
  - Good point: added
- is there a date for this: "A21-106 was the fourth aircraft to be lost when it crashed inland from Shoalwater Bay in Queensland – its pilot and a passenger from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation died"?;
  - Yes, added
- inconsistent: "Davies" (in citation #84), but "Davis" in the References;
  - Well spotted: it's "Davies"
- inconsistent: "Fawley" and "Frawley";
  - "Frawley"
- in the References you provide the state/territory location for Weston Creek and Fyshwick, but not Maryborough. Canberra is probably fair enough to leave off ACT, but I think you should add the state to Maryborough;
  - Fixed
- in the References, some of the ISBNs have hyphens and others don't. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:07, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've standardised on no-hyphens. As always, thanks a lot for your careful review and comments. Nick-D (talk) 10:43, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So far so good on prose per standard disclaimer, down to where I stopped, about two-thirds of the way, at McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet_in_Australian_service#Operational history. These are my edits; please check the edit summaries. (If no edits are showing, the toolserver needs time to catch up.) I'm not sure about how WP:DATED is getting interpreted these days, for instance in the last two paragraphs I covered; does anyone know? - Dank (push to talk) 02:17, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot Dank. While those changes are generally great, I've swapped back a few which removed details which I think are useful. The tweak to the lead resulted in an overly long sentence. Regards Nick-D (talk) 08:13, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How do you feel about "consisted of" rather than "involved"? - Dank (push to talk) 14:43, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let me make that a little stronger. Generally avoid the word "involved"; it has too many different meanings, and it's often taken as a sign of intentionally evasive writing, even when the writing isn't evasive. - Dank (push to talk) 17:14, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I get paid to write evasive wording (don't ask!), but 'involved' isn't too bad - 'included' implies the presence of things which aren't mentioned, while 'involved' is inclusive. 'Consisted of' is a bit awkward in this context, I think, and 'comprised' probably wouldn't be an improvement. The situation here is that this phase of the upgrade program only consisted of minor tweaks to the air frames while they were in the repair hangers for other purposes, so it's not possible to be too precise about what it involved - I presume that it was different for each aircraft depending on how banged up it was. Nick-D (talk) 08:39, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not following ... you say "consisted of" is awkward, but then when you're explaining it to me, you say "this phase of the upgrade program only consisted of minor tweaks ...". Why is that word awkward in this context? - Dank (push to talk) 10:32, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Consisted of" is basically the same as "involved", but involves an extra word - I'm a fan of the third of Orwell's six rules for good writing ;) Nick-D (talk) 10:35, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Garner's doesn't have an entry for "involved". Orwell is actually exactly the guy who might have an opinion on the word ... I saw the Orwell quote on your userpage. If you have access to any of his articles or books on language, you may want to check to see if he weighed in on this word or related phrases such as "related to", "concerned", etc. I'll think about what I've read and get back to you after Wikimania. - Dank (push to talk) 11:11, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just looked it up in Don Watson's book Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words, and his complaint about the word's misuse when its being used to imply that things or people might be dodgy (eg, "I don't want to suggest that he was involved in a series of bank robberies"), which isn't the usage here. That said, I'm sure not going to die in a ditch over this ;) Nick-D (talk) 11:32, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, just to do some hand-waving (before I get subjected to an entire weekend of it ... this is my little attempt at revenge, or sanity :) ... Milhist gets more professional all the time. I don't have any opinion on what that means, or how fast we expand, or what we expand into; it just seems inevitable that we will continue to get noticed for the quality of our work, and continue to expand. At the point off in the future where we're producing the definitive multi-volume encyclopedia of military history, then we'll have to deal with professional copyeditors, and then it's harder to make the rules. Good professional copyeditors do what they do very quickly; they can glance at a page, and if something needs attention, it jumps out at them. "Involved" is one of those words that their eye will always stop on, because it's so symptomatic of a media culture that tries to say less and less about more and more, and one of the obfuscatory goals is never to claim that a person actually did anything, only that they were "involved", and never to say that a project accomplished or was supposed to accomplish X, only that it was related to, or concerned, or involved X. The problem is, the word "involved" has been so popular for so long among media types that it's widely assumed to be a perfectly good synonym for "consisted of" ... and there's a chance that it is now, in some contexts ... but if so, it didn't used to be, and it still raises eyebrows with the old-school copyeditors that (I hope) we're going to be dealing with some day. - Dank (push to talk) 12:29, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I do take your point, but I think that it's pretty clear English in this context. As noted above, I do get paid to write badly though, so my judgments on the finer points of grammar and usage may be suspect ;) Nick-D (talk) 12:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support - a couple of minor points:
- Are the classic Hornets still going to use ASRAAM given the Super Hornets are armed with AIM-9X?
  - Yes. From memory, the RAAF regards ASRAAM as being the superior missile, but isn't fitting them to the Super Hornet as this would require a costly program of modifications and trials and the AIM-9X is a good missile in its own right anyway. Nick-D (talk) 00:15, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- AIM-9M still used as late as 2012 - see article on recent air-to-air LFX in current Airforce News [1] (admittedly these missiles had reached their life of type and were used to dispose of them).
- Same article talks about the withdrawal from service of the AIM 7 in 2004 not 2002 (admittedly probably when the last one was disposed of though, not when AIM-120 was initially introduced). Anotherclown (talk) 00:08, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks, I'll have a go at working that in. It seems that AMRAAMs and ASRAAMs are the standard air to air weapons, but the RAAF still retained its stocks of the older missiles (the F-111s carried Sidewinders until they were retired, and were never fitted to operate ASRAAMs). Thanks for your review. Nick-D (talk) 00:15, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Too easy. The article is already highly developed so I couldn't find much to comment on - my points are just uninformed nitpicks anyway (I'm mostly a terrestrial organism... although I fell out of a Caribou once at 1,000ft which was kind of fun, then went for a swim with the sharks in Jervis Bay which wasn't). Cheers. Anotherclown (talk) 00:27, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      - That makes you more qualified than me! (the highest performance aircraft I've been in is probably an A380, and I sure wasn't flying the thing!). Nick-D (talk) 00:34, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.