TSAMTO, June 13. The United States and Australia continue to discuss the issue of supplying 41 F/A-18A/B Hornet fighter-bombers, which have been decommissioned by the Australian Air Force, at the request of Ukraine.
According to The Australian Financial Review, citing its source, the planes may be sent to Ukraine instead of being stored in an open area (in fact, in a landfill) in the United States, as previously planned.
Currently, the aircraft are at the Williamtown Air Base. As noted, most of them are maintainable and can be prepared for shipment to Ukraine in less than four months.
According to the source, the United States, which recently allowed other Western allies to supply Ukraine with modern fighters, including the F-16, "favorably treat the idea of giving Ukraine the F/A-18." The permission of the official Washington is necessary because it (represented by Boeing Corporation) owns the intellectual property of the aircraft.
As TSAMTO has already reported, by 2020 the Australian government has sold off all obsolete F/A-18A/B Hornet fighter-bombers withdrawn from the country's Air Force, which are being replaced by F/A-18F Block.2 "Super Hornet" and F-35A "Lightning-2".
Of the total initial fleet of 75 units of F/A-18A/B, four cars were written off earlier, 25 units were sold to the Government of Canada, another 46 units were sold to the American company RAVN Aerospace (formerly Air USA). Nevertheless, for some reason, which the publication did not specify, 41 aircraft remained unclaimed: these machines are still in Australia and, apparently, in the future they were planned to be sent to the "cemetery" of aviation equipment at the Davis-Monthan Air Base (Tucson, Arizona).
