How do jet fighters get to war? Currently Australia is deploying F/A-18E/F Super Hornets to the UAE to fight in Iraq. Obviously the UAE (and Iraq) is a very long way from Australia and well beyond the typical range of one of these aircraft.

On TV they literally showed the Australian Prime Minister waving goodbye while the jets took off and flew into the distance, which for some reason seemed odd and made me wonder about how fighter jets are typically ferried to a distant war.

I kind of assumed they were loaded onto an aircraft carrier and shipped there, but Australia doesn't have an aircraft carrier so obviously this isn't the case.

I assume they must therefore fly, but:


Do they fly hop to hop within their usual range refuelling at each stop? Where would these stops be? I assume they can't just refuel at a civilian airport in an arbitrary country and would have to be an air force base belonging to a close ally.
Do they fly continuously with aerial refuelling? Does the tanker need to make hops to refuel?
Do they swap their weapons for extended fuel tanks which provide enough range to fly continuously to the UAE?
Are they actually shipped via regular military cargo ship and the "departure" on TV just for show?
If they do fly continuously, it seems like flying non-stop for ~13 hours in a cramped fighter pilot cockpit would be unreasonable (even commercial pilots take shifts), or would they fly supersonic and perhaps reduce this to 5 or 6 hours?


Answers don't necessarily have to be Australia -> UAE specific, I'd also be interested to know how the US deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan for example and if the process is consistent or depends on the aircraft and location.
To answer the list in order:

Do they fly hop to hop?

An F-18 can go 3,000km unloaded (ordnance adds a lot of drag) and that's plenty from Australia. You can get to the Middle East in 4 hops, no air-to-air refuelling required. Although if you do an in-flight top-up you can add more than the regular range because you don't need to burn any fuel getting back up to cruise altitude.

Where would these stops be? Surely not at civilian airports?

Military aircraft often use civilian airports - they run on Jet-A just like everything else. Fighters were not an uncommon sight at the general-aviation terminal where I'm from. Loaded warplanes are a political issue, unloaded ones are a good day's business for the airport's fuel merchants. (note that fighters are almost never completely unloaded - the ammunition for the gun has a significant effect on the airplane's trim. But you can't see it.)

An external fuel tank can be added in place of weapons.

Are they actually shipped via regular military cargo ship?

Fixed-wing aircraft are typically not boxed for surface shipping. Helicopters are - no wings to remove and rotors can be folded up very easily.
Carrier-based aircraft will depart from land - the only way you get a Hornet off of a docked carrier is with a crane, so they typically launch everything when still offshore, and load the aircraft the same way on departure.

The USA has enough carriers that they would not deploy a carrier-based fleet like this. If they are adding / replacing aircraft there are probably enough already in Europe - send those where needed and replace them in the normal course of events.

Would they fly supersonic to reduce travel time?

No, they won't go supersonic to reduce the flight time. > Mach 1 consumes so much fuel you'd never get there. Fighters have supersonic capability so they can get there or run away as needed, but it's never used for very long. The Concorde was designed from the beginning for Mach 2 cruise, so it didn't use afterburners once at Mach 2. Subsonic flight suffered as a result, fighters would not accept the subsonic flight handling issues as that's rather important to them :-)

Bombers are often deployed directly from home bases. All modern strategic bombers have global range with in-flight refuelling. You don't leave North Dakota, blow up something in Longwayfromherestan and get home for dinner, but you don't land anywhere else either. Yes, it's many hours in the same seat but the military crews are used to it.