Mr. Speaker, I want to talk on something a little different tonight. On February 7, a member of the other body delivered on the Senate floor what has become an annual tirade of false and misleading statements concerning the Navy's number one weapons system procurement, the F-18E/F Hornet. He concluded at best that the aircraft is not better than the current airplane, and probably is worse, and it is enormously more expensive than continuing with the present FA-18C and D models.

Mr. Speaker, I have two models here. The first is the F-18 C/D. The second is the F-18 E/F. What I will show in this next hour is the extreme advantage of the latter over the C/D model, and why it is necessary that the Navy has its number one aircraft for the future.

Secondly, the gentleman from the other body has never served in the military who was talking about these two aircraft. He has a zero rating from all defense groups and agencies. He stated his own opinion as fact, and I would say that the gentleman in the other body is extremely factually challenged. The gentleman has never served in the armed service. The only credential that he has is that he is liberal.

I say this based on my knowledge and experience in carrier aviation, and on intelligence briefs presented to me recently by the Department of Defense and by the Central Intelligence Agency. It concerns, first, the current, and more importantly, the projected military threat that will face our defense forces over the next decade. We need to take seriously a look at not only what the current threat is that we could face, our men and women in all services, and secondly, it concerns the weapons we are planning to acquire to defeat that threat.

When we look at the threat, we look at the future threat 10 years, 20 years, even 30 years from now, it should be determined on what direction we go with the planning and the aircraft and equipment that we buy presently, and the training of the men and women in our Armed Forces.

I would say that many of the Members have received this intelligence briefing. I would encourage the gentleman from the other body to do so. The classified briefings can bring insight into what those actual threats are and the direction that we need to go.

I would ask, Mr. Speaker, what brings Duke Cunningham, a Republican from California, why should I be such another expert, other than the gentleman in the other body?

First of all, I served 20 years in the United States Navy. I was a Top Gun student. I was a Top Gun instructor. I was commanding officer of the adversary squadron. I was on the Defense Authorization Committee, and I am now on the Defense Committee on Appropriations and sat in on many of the Intel briefings. I would tell the gentleman that I have flown the F-14. I have flown the Air Force F-15. I have flown the F-16, the F-18C/D and the F-18E/F that we are talking about. I have flown in the Middle East, and I flew in Israel in 1973 and 1974. I have flown against enemy aircraft in combat, and I have shot down many of those aircraft. I have also flown against them in peacetime to judge their capabilities, and I helped develop the tactics against those particular aircraft.

ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bilirakis). The Chair would advise the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) that he should refrain from characterizing the position of an individual Senator, even if not mentioning the Senator by name; and the gentleman should also refrain from urging an individual Senator to take a particular position.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I would particularly recommend that the gentleman in the other body get the briefings on potential threats posed by forces by Iran, Iraq and Libya, in North Korea and China. Specifically, Mr. Speaker, I would recommend that the Speaker look at the Russian SU-37 with the AA-10, the AA-11 and AA-12 missile, because in today's fleet, if our pilots in the F-14, the F-15, the F-16 or current F-18 meet this SU-27, with the Russian missiles and their jammer and their radar, our pilots will die 95 percent of the time.

That is not spin, Mr. Speaker. That is fact.

I would recommend these briefings on the capabilities of carrier battle groups to meet and defeat these particular threats and the tactics involved in them, which I deal with on a daily basis. The capabilities of carrier aviation today center on two tactical aircraft, both of which I have flown, the F-14 and the F-18 Hornet. The Navy has upgraded them throughout the years. As they buy an airplane, new equipment, new electronics, new stealth capabilities, are placed on those aircraft.

The F-14 airframe was designed in the 1960s, and the F-18 in the 1970s. We have added many things to those aircraft, trying to keep them with the capability to meet those threats that I have previously talked about.

When the F-14 was designed, the Navy desperately needed a high speed interceptor. Right after the Vietnam War, Mr. Speaker, there were many that thought that our only threat was going to be Backfire bombers coming in from the former Soviet Union. We trained many of our pilots as interceptor pilots, although the Navy Fighter Weapons School, which we know as Top Gun, continued to learn how to fight the F-14 and F-18 in what we commonly call a dog fight.

Counterfleets of projected cruise missiles were also a threat coming in not only at the carriers but our battleships and our troops embarked, and our aircraft were designed to meet that particular threat. That performance dominated the design at the expense of reliability, maintainability, survivability, and versatility.

The F-14 today is very expensive to maintain, and each cost per flight hour is an extreme mode.

In early mid-1970, Congress, in its wisdom, directed both the Navy and the Air Force to develop their next generation of tactical aircraft. The F-18, and for the Air Force the F-16; and if we want to look I do not have a model, Mr. Speaker, of the F-16 but if we want to look at the Russian-built MiG 29, it is very similar. As a matter of fact, the Soviets stole the plans of our F-18 and our F-16 and devised this particular airplane called the MiG 29.

They also stole the plans for our older F-111 and created a MiG that is very poor performing. They stole the wrong plans, because in my opinion the F-111 could not shoot down the Goodyear Blimp, but they stole the plans and thought it would be a good airplane because it had variable swept wing like the F-14.

All of these aircraft have served our Nation well and they have been equally successful by our forces, by both our men and women in Desert Storm and other areas. But they are limited.

The aging fleet of the F-14 Tomcats, many of which are over 20 years old, Mr. Speaker, are difficult and expensive to maintain because they were designed before modern survivability. We call it VSEVO.

Mr. Speaker, we know it as stealth capability, and those techniques have been developed over the years since the F-14 and the F-18 models were developed. Like the F-14, the early models of the F-18 were growing long in the tooth; and even the most recently built F-18C/D model are no longer able to keep up with the evolving threat, i.e., the SU-27, which is a Russian variant, the SU-35 and SU-37, which are projected Russian threats in the next few years, along with their AA-10, AA-11, and AA-12 missiles, which are superior to our best missiles in a dog fight.

The aircraft that we are talking about that the gentleman in the other body talks so badly about that says it was not better, I can bring four of these heavy duty weapons back aboard and I can carry enough fuel for 15 passes at that carrier deck

in case there are problems with the deck, if there are problems with the weather or even the tailhook itself on this particular airplane. So it means survivability to those men and women in those circumstances.

Mr. Speaker, when I was in Vietnam, we had problems bringing Rockeye, which is a bomblet, back aboard the carrier and quite often we did not have time to stick around on the target to develop that particular weapon because we ran low on fuel. F-18E/F extends the range of the current F-18 by drastic amounts, not only giving the pilot time on target but survivability in an area which could be very hostile to enemy threats.

Another advantage of the new F-18E/F because the defense budget has been so low and because many of the deployments to Somalia, to Haiti, to Iraq four times, to Bosnia, to Kosovo, to bombing aspirin factories have cut off the defense budget; and we have not had the advantage of the particular airplane to allow it the capabilities that we need in this particular airplane.

What this aircraft offers is it can support itself, if we take off these weapons off this pylon, the airplane is built as an air-to-air tanker. It can give us an additional thousand pounds of fuel, which will allow us to go over a thousand miles, where the F-18/CD has as little as 370 miles of range.

So the gentleman in the other body that spoke about the capabilities of this older CD being worse than the current F-18E/F that we have coming up is just not the case. I would tell the gentleman that he is incorrect, and I would tell him to get not only, I do not know if I can do that, if I can advise him to take briefs, Mr. Speaker, but if he does not, he should. I do not know if I can advise him or not under the rules. But if he is overly concerned that the Super Hornet will cost 13 percent more than the older airplane, I would ask him to think about the capability of this aircraft not only in cold weather in saving our pilots, the ability of this airplane to be a tanker so that this one will not run out of fuel, but the Hornet in studies has been shown that this airplane will die in combat four to one to this airplane. Why?

First of all, you have the endurance and the range to go to the target not direct but in a route that avoids enemy threats. Secondly, if you are engaged by enemy threats, you have the fuel to get back to the carrier, where, with this airplane, just to use an afterburner will cause you to run out of fuel or could cause you to run out of fuel. This additional 13 percent in cost will save four aircraft to one in combat with different studies. And I think that is very critical.

Mr. Speaker, I took this airplane up at Pax River and also flew it. Because the aircraft itself, when it was being initially tested, had a condition that they call wing drop. When you take this aircraft, generally at speeds in which you are trying to close in very close to the enemy, and we will not shoot another F-18, let us at least use a Russian airplane, if we are trying to close in on another airplane close aboard, what was happening, something that they did not look at in a test bed was a condition called wing drop.

If you would pull under certain PSF, different G-loadings, different altitudes, then what happened is the air flow over the wing of this aircraft would cause one wing to depart other and then the wing would drop, which is a tactical disadvantage and could even cost you that fight.

Engineers went in. I flew the airplane at 40,000 feet; and I then flew it at 35,000 feet, and I then flew it at 30,000 feet trying to duplicate the wing drop after the engineers had fixed it. We could not duplicate it.

But during this time, the point that I would make, my chase pilot flew at 25,000 feet just saving their fuel while I did all of these other tests using in and out of afterburner, under high-G loading not only in military power but maximum power, burning fuel at a very high rate, this aircraft was sitting at 25,000 feet at maximum endurance just saving its fuel. Even with all of that, I ended up with 3,000 pounds more fuel, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this absurd and contradictory analysis is all the more unsettling when combined with the fact that in the daysof the original Hornet, the Navy had A-6 tankers to enhance the range of our aircraft for in-flight refueling. These vulnerable aircraft have since been retired, leaving the aging S-3, which has very limited tanking capability, as the only tanker for the fleet today.

Fortunately, the F-18E/F unlike the F-18C/D was designed to carry fuel tanks. You see all of these stations underneath can be loaded with fuel tanks. What is the advantage of that? It can fly at speeds and altitudes most suitable for the combat mission unlike slower, less maneuverable ones. Let me give an example.

In Vietnam, we used to go up and try to tank behind a C-130. It was so slow that I used as much burner getting the two or 3,000 pounds of fuel out of that airplane than I got. I burned more fuel than I actually received, but at least I was heading toward the target. This aircraft can act as a tanker and tank at the same speed as the other F-18s and be just as maneuverable. This gives the battle group commander the capability to launch one or two Super Hornets, each carrying two smart missiles, accompanied by an additional Super Hornet configured as a tanker, and after a single refueling outbound leg, the missile-armed aircraft will strike the enemy targets a thousand miles away and return, a thousand miles and return. Remember, this airplane was 370 miles only. So again the gentleman in the other body was wrong and misinformed.

The big part of this airplane is the maintainability. I have spoken about the F-14 and its capability. If you have an aircraft that is a tanker and also can act as a fighter, it gives you another fighter airborne. Plus you do not have to have all the other maintenance people to maintain a totally different airplane, to have different parts on the carrier because this aircraft is the same as the airplane you are going out to fight with as a tanker. The parts are common, they are easier to keep, and that way you also keep more aircraft up on that carrier deck making your readiness much, much higher.

With two-thirds of each launch serving as strike aircraft and the third serving first as the tankers and then as combat air patrol between the battle group and the enemy, tremendous new capabilities and flexibility and alternatives accrue to the battle group commander.

My final attribute of the F-18E/F is its capability for growth. The reason the F-18 A, B, C and D models have remained effective is that we have built up those systems since the early 1980s and they have been upgraded every 2 years, incorporating new radars, mission computers, forward-looking infrared sensors, and weapons employment capabilities as I noted earlier. This capacity for further modernization has been exhausted, and there is no more room. Not only is the current F-18C/D already too heavy to incorporate any additional systems, without considerable redesign there is no space to locate such systems or black boxes, as we refer to them in the military.

Likewise, there is no additional electrical power or cooling capacity to accommodate the new equipment. So in short, Mr. Speaker, the old aircraft cannot keep up not only with the threat but the modernization necessary for our men and women to win in combat and to complete their mission. The F-18E/F has, like its predecessor the F-18A/B did in the day, the access of electrical power, cooling capacity, and cubic space to accommodate 20 years of growth and therefore will be able to incorporate new sensors, countermeasures and weapons still on the drawing board. One of the advantages is that the high technology of the new F-22, the Joint Strike Fighter as it develops, will be able to use those same weapons systems, those same radars in this aircraft and exchange them because there is plenty of room for growth, up to 20 years, which should be just about the service life of the F-18E/F before we go to the Joint Strike Fighter and whatever comes next.

I began these remarks with the opinion that they are the most important of my career. I believe this because I feel that the F -18 is essential to the preparedness and success of carrier aviation and naval air power projection for the next 20 years, Mr. Speaker. As events in both the Arabian Gulf and in the Adriatic Sea have borne out recently, our land-based tactical assets are not always welcome on otherwise friendly real estate. Quite often, we will have to engage it with a battle group or a carrier air battle group. That, combined with the Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Navy, in joint exercises and joint combat, our troops should be able to withstand those enemy threats.

But I do not think there is anyone on either side of the aisle or the gentleman in the other body that would have our men and women engage an enemy in a system where they knew that they could not win and they would either die or be shot down. The engineer and manufacturing development phase is complete. The operational evaluation is complete. The airplane is ready. It is ready to put to the fleet.

Back in 1992, the Navy presented its $4.8 billion estimate for this phase in FY 1990 dollars. The Navy and the contractors have come in below those costs. Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Northrup Gramine, Raytheon, General Electric aircraft engines have brought the program in well below the cost estimates, and it is a superior aircraft, Mr. Speaker. Congress also specified that the F -18 production costs not exceed that of most F -18C/Ds by more than 25 percent. This aircraft came in at 13 percent the cost.

Frankly, I have been a little skeptical of some years ago to whether the F -18E/F could live up to its billing and I was wrong. It has. I was skeptical that the radar would not meet the threat but it has. For the preceding 2 years an annoying, relatively minor anomaly has shown up in certain combinations of speed and altitude, and I addressed that. It is called wing drop. That has been completed and finished by our engineers, not only not at the expense of our stealth capability nor our range as you would think that you have to hang something else on the airplane. At the end of an exhaustive process, the fixes were finished, the wind tunnel tests are done; and we are ready to buy this airplane for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps if they so choose.

I would be comfortable in this airplane, Mr. Speaker, fighting against the threats that we have today. And the threats that we have tomorrow we will have to upgrade this aircraft as well. The Navy's most successful initial sea trials on board the U.S.S. Stennis CVN-74 in January 1977, the dual F -18E/F is virtually identical to the front and rear cockpits and can be flown in training with our student pilots. This airplane is one of the easiest aircraft I have ever flown to bring aboard or take off on an aircraft carrier, making it user friendly for our young pilots as they enter the fleet. That is important as well, Mr. Speaker.

Eight production Super Hornets have been delivered to Fleet Readiness Squadron 122 at Naval Air Station Lemoore, California, where the cadre of instructor pilots is unanimous in its approval of how well the Super Hornet performs day and night and under most grueling conditions. It can be conducted aboard a ship within a test range of shore or in simulated combat fights.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit for the Record a Commander Operational Test and Evaluation Force, COMOPTEVFOR, released the results of the OPEVAL, specifically that the aircraft was found to be operationally suitable and operationally effective. The highest grade attainable in a test of this type or ever from an aircraft from the United States. They also recommended the aircraft for fleet introduction.

I would say to the gentleman in the other body once again, he is wrong. Boeing Super Hornet awarded the NAA Collier Trophy, Washington, D.C., the National Aeronautic Association announced today, Mr. Speaker, that the Boeing F /A -18E/F Super Hornet has been selected to receive the NAA Collier Trophy recognizing the top aeronautical achievement in the United States for FY 1999. That in succinct order, Mr. Speaker, is why that I say the gentleman in the other body, if he wants to man up in one of the older airplanes, I will man up in the new one, and he will die in a fireball all tensed up.