Murder Hornet!
January 9, 2025
The ‘Murder Hornet’ name emerged in 2019, when invasive Asian Giant Hornets appeared in Washington State, carving a trail of destruction through the State’s beehives!
The most official use of the term Murder Hornet to refer to F/A-18E/F Super Hornets armed with five AIM-120 AMRAAM and four AIM-9X Sidewinder air to air missiles came in the year-in-review factsheet for 2024 issued by the office of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). The same document also formally unveiled the AIM-174B missile, the first combat employment of an AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM), and the Navy’s first air-to-air kill of a hostile UAV.
The Murder Hornet air-to-air ordnance configuration for the Super Hornet was developed under an urgent operational requirement, and leveraged work carried out to give the EA-18G Growler variant an AIM-9X capability. Because the EA-18G has wingtip AN/ALQ-218 wideband receivers it cannot carry Sidewinders on that station, so work was undertaken to allow them to be carried on the two outermost underwing stations (stations 2 and 10).
By making the same modifications to the F/A-18E/F, the Super Hornet was given the ability to carry four AIM-9Xs, instead of just two. In full Murder Hornet fit, the Super Hornet also carries four underwing AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, with another on the starboard fuselage ‘shoulder’ pylon, augmented by an AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR (Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared) targeting pod to port, and with a 480-gallon fuel tank on the centreline.
NAVAIR’s Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) worked with PEO (U&W) to provide “an accelerated path to generate a flight clearance” for the carriage of AIM-9s on the outboard underwing stations. The modification was driven by a need to give Super Hornets and Growlers flying over the Red Sea more options when engaging Houthi UAVs.
F/A-18E/Fs with the Murder Hornet weapons load were first observed operating from the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea in April 2024. F/A-18Es assigned to VFA-105 (Strike Fighter Squadron 105) ‘Gunslingers’ were the first Murder Hornets to be photographed! The configuration has since been seen on Super Hornets from other carrier air wings operating in the Middle East.
