When the publicity was first ramping up for the Super Hornet, much was made of the SH's two additional pylons. It was touted that with these pylons more weapons could be carried than on the regular Bug. The word "carried" was parsed very carefully, as were many of the claims for the SH early on. The statement was completely true. More weapons could becarried on the Super Bug due to the new weapons stations. What was not publicized was that powered weapons could not actually be fired from these two new stations due to clearance problems from the fuselage and possibly intake ingestion (not sure about the latter). As more and more critics caught on to this it became somewhat of an embarrassment, since in effect this meant that those pylons were simply to carry more external fuel. Plus, it limited what the plane could do. With the deaths of the F-14D and the A/FX (remember, F/A-18E/F was supposed to be an interim aircraft pending fielding of the latter), the Navy really had nowhere else to go. So, those inner pylons were toed outward, which solved the fuselage interference problem. Of course, that now meant there was an interference issue with the outer pylons so they were toed out as well.
While this had little impact on the SH with clean wings, it did increase drag when it was actually carrying weapons. I don't know the actual number, I've heard 4- 8%, but I don't have any hard data or reliable confirmation--may not have ever been revealed, and would vary with external load. This is significant because lowered drag is where most of the SH's increased range is supposed to come from (it also carries a lot of extra fuel, but the F414s have a higher fuel burn than the F404s). Now, since it was a Gov't initiated change that toed out the pylons, Boeing/NG can not be penalized if the SH range goes down, because supposedly the a/c met the final range requirement in the original configuration. How much that is over the regular Bug always was a matter of debate. The noted aviation writer James Stevenson has written that if you put the SH's larger external tanks on the legacy Hornet (yes, it can use them), the only scenario where the E/F exceeds the legacy Hornet's range is in the ground attack mission where the increase in radius is 64 miles. Dunno, don't follow it that closely anymore.
Pysyy asiat jämptinä.
