Roughead defends Navy aviation plans

The Navy’s top officer defended the service’s request to reduce this year’s planned buy of F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighters as a budgeting decision, and proclaimed his support for the plane’s successor.

“The Joint Strike Fighter is extremely important,” Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, said Tuesday in response to questioning at a Capitol Hill hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee. “We have to get to the JSF.”

The service’s decision to ask for nine fewer F/A-18s than called for last year was a result of multiple requirements. “We are stretched in our obligations to meet our demands,” Roughead said.

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