The Royal Malaysian Air Force, as part of the Malaysian Armed Forces modernisation programme started in 1988, began its search for a new air superiority fighter and strike fighter in the early 1990s. In 1993, it was announced that the selected air superiority and strike fighters were to be the MiG-29 and the F/A-18D Hornet respectively, with a focus on diversification of equipment so as not to be reliant on a single country for weapons. Eight F/A-18D Hornets were procured under a RM 1.4 billion contract, with deliveries completed by August 1997. Serving in No. 18 Squadron, the RMAF Hornet’s only combat operation to date was in 2013, providing air strike support for Operation Daulat.

Starting as a small fleet of eight Hornets, it was hoped that additional Hornet purchases would follow, but the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis prevented Malaysia from procuring more, and later interest favoured the larger Su-30. The small Hornet fleet still underwent modernisation efforts, with Boeing starting in 2011 to add features such as JHMCS and IFF interrogation capabilities. Amidst desires to expand the fleet and concerns over airframe life issues, accentuated by an RMAF Hornet crashing in August 2025, there is an ongoing discussion to procure Kuwait’s Hornet fleet, since they replaced them with the Super Hornet.

Introduced in Update 2.53 “Line of Contact”, the F/A-18D Hornet makes its debut as part of the Japanese tech tree, serving under the Royal Malaysian Air Force. As a dual-seat F/A-18 Hornet, the accommodation of the back-seater means the aircraft is slightly heavier and contains less internal fuel than the single-seat F/A-18C Hornet. However, barring this change in aircraft characteristics, the F/A-18D has all the avionics and armament functions of the F/A-18C. Thus, the F/A-18D has access to features such as a helmet-mounted display, ballistic computers, and thermal vision for locating and engaging targets. A large variety of armaments is available to make the Hornet a highly capable multirole aircraft, with the ability to mix and match AIM-9 Sidewinders, AIM-7 Sparrows, and AIM-120 AMRAAMs for air-to-air engagements, as well as a large assortment of guided and unguided bombs and rockets for anti-surface engagements.