Rhino.
The legacy Hornet, while a proven work-horse, is old, broken, and showing its age. Ask any Hornet driver, I have yet have one say anything different. Sure, it gets upgraded here and there, but it is not setup for the systems that the Rhino will see in the coming years. That's the thing, the Rhino has not yet seen its full potential, as many of the systems it was designed for have still yet to become fully operational. These are systems the Hornet can't support. The Navy is still pumping money into the Rhino program and new ones are being made as we speak. Sure, the Rhino is "slower" on the top-end, but give me a break, when do you expect to fly a slick jet into combat? Bombs loaded, fuel loaded, that Mach 1.6 vs Mach 1.5 isn't going to happen anyway. The Rhino will certainly out-accelerate a Hornet below 0.9M, I've done it and seen it. Some will say the Hornet is a SLIGHTLY better BFM fighter. That might be true, I don't know, I've never flown it (not that I'm any good at BFM anyway). Then again, that comes down to the pilot.
Strike warfare is the name of the game. The Rhino has two extra weapon stations than the Hornet and carries a BUTTLOAD more fuel. Every Hornet friend I've talked to is amazed at how much we can carry AND trap with. The bring-back of the Rhino vs the Hornet is staggering. I had a tough time getting aboard one night, took me three passes... still wasn't bingo and was BARELY tank.
I'm biased, I've never flown a Charlie, I only know from what my past instructors have told me. Take it for what it's worth.
As for single-seat vs two-seat. Well, I came into the RAG wanting single-seat, no questions asked. I was tired of flying with another person, I wanted to do it all myself. Hell, that's how I'd been trained from day 1 of Primary. Then I saw the complexity of the stuff we do, and after a couple Crew Coordinated flights in the syllabus, I was SOLD on the F model. Doing a night self-escort strike, large force exercise, on goggles, self lasing LGBs, and running intercepts on the ingress and egress, not to mention surface-to-air threats... fvck that, I want someone to help take the load off me and help out. I know I can do it myself, that doesn't mean I want to. I've had WSOs make their worth in gold a few times already, and I'm super junior. Believe me, it's a great asset when the WSO is "patting your head" during a rough night behind the boat. Again, strike warfare is the name of the game. From what I've seen and experienced, the two-seat squadrons are hands down better at weapons employment than the single-seaters. It's only logical... the pilot can fly the jet while the WSO can operate the systems and setup the delivery.
Again, I'm biased. Take it for what it's worth.
