Sub Buster: VFA-41 Returns to NAS Lemoore With a Submarine Kill Marking After Operation Epic Fury

On October 1, 2026, VFA-41, the Black Aces, returned to Naval Air Station Lemoore, California from deployment aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72). One F/A-18F Super Hornet rolled in wearing a marking almost no aircraft in modern history has earned: a solid submarine silhouette on the nose, labeled “Sub Buster.” That marking indicates the aircraft’s involvement in the confirmed destruction of an Iranian submarine during the Lincoln’s deployment as part of Operation Epic Fury.

What the “Sub Buster” Marking Means

Kill markings are among the oldest traditions in military aviation. A swastika under the cockpit. A rising sun on the fuselage. They communicate, at a glance, what a crew faced and what they achieved. The tradition has never been informal - these markings require authorization up the chain of command, and the community treats them as documented claims, not decoration.

A submarine silhouette is something different from an air-to-air kill or a surface strike tally. It represents one of the rarest designations a naval aviator can earn. The fact that it appears on a Super Hornet - not a dedicated anti-submarine platform - makes this engagement historically significant.

Why an F/A-18F Carrying This Marking Is Unusual

Anti-submarine warfare has traditionally belonged to dedicated platforms. The S-3 Viking, a four-engine turbofan built specifically for the mission, was the carrier fleet’s fixed-wing submarine hunter for decades. It carried sonobuoys, magnetic anomaly detection equipment, torpedoes, and depth charges. Its crews trained for nothing else.

The Navy retired the Viking from carrier-based anti-submarine operations in 2009, citing cost, maintenance burden, and a post-Cold War threat environment that seemed to de-prioritize the mission. That role redistributed across the fleet: the P-8 Poseidon handles long-range maritime patrol from shore, the MH-60R Romeo helicopter works close-in contacts from the carrier deck, and surface ships and submarines carry their own sensors and weapons.

What essentially ended in 2009 was dedicated carrier-based fixed-wing anti-submarine aviation - the kind where a jet from the deck hunts and kills a submarine. That assumption appears to need revisiting.

How a Super Hornet Crew Was Likely Involved

The Navy has not publicly detailed how the VFA-41 F/A-18F participated in this engagement. The full operational picture of Operation Epic Fury has not been released, and given the nature of the operation, that timeline is not unexpected.

What is known about modern carrier strike group operations is that no single platform acts alone in a complex engagement. A submarine contact might be developed by a P-8 operating hundreds of miles away, a surface ship’s towed sonar array, or an MH-60R with a dipping sonar working a close-in contact. Multiple sensors from multiple platforms feed a common tactical picture. Once a submarine is localized and a decision is made to engage, the question becomes which asset is best positioned to execute.

An aircraft already overhead, armed, with targeting data fed to it, and with a weapons systems officer (WSO) in the back seat capable of managing a complex weapons release is not automatically out of the picture simply because it’s an F/A-18 rather than a purpose-built anti-submarine platform. The specific weapon used has not been disclosed.

The Operational Environment: Why This Was Hard

Iran maintains a capable submarine force. Their inventory includes Russian-built Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines, domestically developed Fateh-class boats, and older refurbished hardware. The Kilo class, in particular, is well-regarded. Iranian crews have been operating Kilos since the 1990s, and the boats are quiet, reliable platforms. Running on batteries at slow patrol speed, a Kilo-class submarine produces a minimal acoustic signature.

The Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz are among the more demanding environments for submarine hunting. The water is shallow. Warm temperatures create complicated acoustic propagation. Heavy commercial shipping traffic generates significant background noise. The Iranians know those waters well and have planned around the geography for decades.

Finding, tracking, and destroying a submarine in that environment requires coordinated effort across multiple assets and intelligence inputs. It is not a one-aircraft job. But the coordinated effort has to end somewhere - a weapon has to leave a platform. In this case, from what the marking tells us, that execution involved an F/A-18F from VFA-41.

VFA-41’s History and What This Adds to It

VFA-41 has been flying since 1945. Their history includes a moment that aviation historians still cite: on January 4, 1989, two F-14 Tomcats from VFA-41 engaged and shot down two Libyan MiG-23 Floggers over the Gulf of Sidra. Those aircraft came home wearing kill markings. The Libyan flags stayed on the fuselage for years.

The tradition of the kill marking is not abstract for the Black Aces. It is part of their institutional identity. Their crews understand its weight from the day they join the squadron.

VFA-41 transitioned to the F/A-18F Super Hornet in 2001 and has been one of the fleet’s front-line Super Hornet units ever since. Their patch is the black ace of spades. The chapter most people assumed could no longer be written - a carrier-based fixed-wing aircraft earning a submarine kill - has now been written.

Why This Matters for the Fleet’s Future

The F/A-18 Super Hornet’s future in the carrier fleet is being shaped right now by the introduction of the F-35C and ongoing force structure debates. The Super Hornet has consistently demonstrated an ability to adapt to mission sets outside its original design brief. This engagement adds a data point to that argument that is difficult to dismiss.

The two-seat Foxtrot model specifically - with the WSO managing weapons systems from the back seat - has proven capable of enabling complex, multi-domain engagements that push the edges of what the original design envisioned. The crew of the Sub Buster jet will carry this deployment for the rest of their careers.

Kill Markings as Public Accountability

The marking on a jet is not only a record of what happened. It is a form of accountability within the community. It says, publicly: this crew was present, this aircraft was involved, and this is what occurred. It is documented in photographs, in unit histories, in the memory of everyone who walked past that jet on the ramp at Lemoore.

The historical parallel is the Battle of the Atlantic. Allied maritime patrol aircraft - Liberators, Sunderlands, Catalinas - killed hundreds of U-boats during the Second World War and came home with submarine silhouettes on their fuselages. Through the Cold War, carrier aircraft occasionally carried that marking, but confirmed kills were rare, and the prospect of a carrier-based fixed-wing crew earning one seemed to leave the table when the last Viking did.

The Black Aces came home with a submarine on their jet. That fact now sits in the sunlight on the ramp at Lemoore, for anyone who cares to look.

The Aviationist broke this story and has been covering VFA-41’s return and Operation Epic Fury in detail. Their reporting is the primary source for the developing operational picture.

Key Takeaways

On October 1, 2026, VFA-41 returned to NAS Lemoore with an F/A-18F Super Hornet bearing a submarine kill marking (“Sub Buster”) from Operation Epic Fury
The marking indicates involvement in the confirmed destruction of an Iranian submarine - one of the rarest designations in modern naval aviation
Carrier-based fixed-wing anti-submarine aviation effectively ended when the S-3 Viking retired in 2009; this engagement suggests that capability has not disappeared, only redistributed
The F/A-18F’s two-seat configuration, with a dedicated WSO, likely enabled the complex weapons management required for this type of engagement
Kill markings require command authorization and carry the weight of documented, public accountability within the naval aviation community