[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

The 2004 F-18 mishap that they referenced was pilot error. In the book Punching Out: Stories of High Speed Ejections, the pilot gave a very magnanimous account of his ejection and admitted that he screwed up a lot of things. Most telling: an F-18 at max landing weight can get airborne in less than 1200 feet, which was plenty when he passed the arresting cable and knew that he didn't throw down the hook fast enough. He didn't attempt go-around, he just pulled the handle when he saw runway end lights coming up.

I'd like to see how this ends up but the Navy is bad about generating a publicly-releasable report even though they're supposed to.

By the way, the title of the book I referenced above really isn't right. A "high speed" ejection is an ejection >450 knots. An ejection during landing clearly isn't high speed. The book talks about all kinds of ejections that are not high-speed, including an A-7 ejection in 1969 that was done underwater! The pilot was headed for Davy Jones' locker and wasn't expecting to survive. Somebody was looking out for him that day.

[USNBandit]

The F-18 is a lot more plane to stop than the T-45. I am trying to remember the F-18 mishap, and I think he may have also forgotten to turn the Anti-skid on. For shipboard ops anti-skid is turned off. No Anti-skid and carrierized tires (inflated to extremely high pressure) and a 7500’ runway starts feeling really short.