F/A-18 Hornet Suomen ilmavoimissa (in Finnish Air Force)

The McDonnell Douglas, which came into use between 1995 and 2000 as a replacement for the MiG-21 and Draken fighters, and later the Boeing F/A-18 Hornet took the Air Force to a completely up-to-date fighter fleet for the first time. The plane's performance and weapon systems enabled equal participation in international western exercises and maintaining its own air defense and flight operations at an international level.

As an aircraft, the Hornet has proven to be a good and reliable fighter, which has been able to be updated as weapon systems constantly develop. It has also met expectations in terms of flight characteristics and performance values. Hornet will be in service until the end of the 2020s, when the service life will be about 35 years. The completely modern Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II has been chosen as its replacement.

The author is engineer lieutenant colonel evp. and the Air Force's long-time test pilot Jyrki Laukkanen participated with his own contribution in the acquisition and commissioning of the Hornet from the beginning as a special expert at the Test Flight Center. Due to the age structure of the MiG-21 pilot, who started as an Air Force pilot already in 1968, flights with the Hornet were limited to test flights at the Koelentokeskus with the two-seater version, which accumulated around one hundred hours of flight time in the front and rear cockpits.

• Hardcover
• 210 x 297 mm
• 240 pages
• 490 color photos