Posted on 06/24/2006 4:32:47 PM PDT by strategofr
The U.S. Army and Navy are both experiencing a backlash against the expense of running their respective air forces. For example, the navy has some 3,800 aircraft making it, all by itself, one of the top ten air forces in the world. It's an expensive operation to run, with each aircraft costing about $1.1 million a year to operate. About half of the 352,000 personnel in the navy are devoted to running naval aviation. The rising price of oil and spare parts has increased the cost of operating aircraft. The principal carrier aircraft, the F-18, costs over $5,000 an hour to fly. Carrier aircraft have expenses land based aircraft do not, mainly the added maintenance required because of the stress put on the airframe from carrier landings, and the corrosion from all that salt sea air. The rest of the navy is not happy about these financial arrangements.
The army has an even larger air force than the navy, although nearly all of them are helicopters. But these are expensive beasts to operate. A CH-47 costs more to operate, per flight hour, than F-18. The largest bone of contention is that half the army's training budget is consumed by the aviation community. The ground troops point out that less than one percent of the casualties in Iraq have been aviators. The helicopter loss rate in Iraq is less than a tenth of what it was in Vietnam. As a result, even the aviators are admitting that the ground troops should get more of that training money.
Neither service has been able to get more money from Congress for aviation, so it has had to cut flying hours and maintenance costs. Flight simulators take up some of the slack, but otherwise, pilots have to get more done for every hour they are in the air. Same with people on the ground, where time-honored procedures have been revised and performed more quickly and efficiently. The accident rate has not gone up, nor has the proficiency of the pilots noticeably declined. But, then, American naval aviation has not had to face a formidable opponent in a long, long time.
Aviators, especially in the army, use flight simulators a lot more, even though the pilots would prefer to be flying the actual aircraft. But the simulators cost less than a tenth as much, per flight hour, to operate. The current simulators are of recent design, and quite realistic. Simulators can also do things flying real aircraft cannot. For example, the simulators can recreate the sand storms, and other nasty weather native to Iraq, but not found in U.S. Army aviation training centers. The Simulators can realistically recreate a wide range of emergencies, many of which you would not want to play with in a real aircraft while in the air.
While the pilots are correct in pointing out that flight hours have historically produced the best pilots, it's also true that American pilots fly more than any others on the planet. It's all relative. Everyone has to deal with the rising cost of fuel, spare parts and other expenses incurred when you take flight. U.S. pilots also have the best flight simulators, and, finally, the lowest accident and combat loss rates in history. The non-aviators in the navy and army are simply asking for a fair share of the limited money available, and insisting that the aviators recognize that the there are limits.
Here we go again, the bean-counters at work with nary a thought in their tiny little heads about what it relly takes to have a vibrant, capable, respected, flexible, and yes a feared military.
Bingo.
Proficiency has in fact declined. Hasn't yet resulted in "accidents" yet because we are not under offensive pressure at the moment; and we haven't had combat problems which are more serious because we don't have an enemy at the moment.
The Russians may have a better combat airplane; and their training is catching up. Hopefully, we won't be in combat with them.
But command of the skies requires continuous training in live airplanes plus ground training in classrooms and in simulators. Shorting any of this exposes our airmen to combat deficiencies that usually prove fatal.
Very good analysis.
As the communities within the services become more tightly integrated and the services themselves fight as an integrated whole (joint & combined warfare) it is gratifying to see this hard-nosed approach to balancing the forces.
What this analysis declined to include is the increasing use of precision munitions and UAVs to augment and supplant traditional air warfare practices. These are just the tip of an iceberg of radical and rapid evolution away from our century-old warfare force concept.
The next 50 years of this evolution will be fascinating and critical to our existance as a free nation. Watching it will be akin to seeing a science fiction novel come to life.
The military of the future will be based upon Special Forces in control of UAVs.
It seems the grunts suffer the casualties while the flyboys and girls glide and swirl on silver wings. The cost overruns are never less than a billion or two for every contraption DOD sends out the hangar door. A Cessna or Pilatus could be riggeed to drop a couple LGBs or Jdams.
But no---as is said sometimes the best is the enemy of good enough. Its sure not the threat environment of B17 day raids over Berlin--so why not do a little better for our everyday heroes slugging it out door to door? Get them some up to date hardware, robotics etc for their missios they willingly perform. Or get the old B52s over the cities and win this thing with minimal additional American casualties.
Although I may agree with you in principle, the PR impact of carpet bombing using B52s when we have the technology and the equipment to precision bomb with F-15/16/18's would be immense.
I concur that this will be a hugely important part of our future armed forces and that it will be relatively much larger than it now is. But I don't believe Special Forces will be the core of our armed forces.
Mass has its own might in warfare. Special Forces can be the tip of our spear. But we will need to retain mass. At the same time our armed forces' mass must be made much more responsive and nimble. How this will be accomplished is beyond my crystal ball.
Just another "IMHO" comment ;-)
Yeah, screw it.
When a combat pilot gets behind the AC he can just pull over.
Hey, Aviation never won any modern war anyway, right?
- Spread the bucks around and let the bean counters and the groundpounders be happy.
"The military of the future will be based upon Special Forces in control of UAVs."
Not literally of course, but for such a short statement you said an awful lot.
Money. Militaries are inherently inefficient, and only money atones for this. Free people who are interested in maintaining their freedom need to ensure that their militaries have lots of money. Much of it will be wasted, but there's no help for that.
...with each aircraft costing about $1.1 million a year to operate.
Thats still a lot less than it costs to have a ceo in a major big board listed company that does nothing but pilfer away company assets.
When your ground grunts call for air support and get told it'll be 2 days let them eat what's coming at them, is that your attitude?
Navy avaition is the best in the world by far, don't short change it!
If we're going to continue to engage in far-flung, preemptive, invented wars of convenience for the protection of energy resources and to coercively remake the Middle East in our percieved image, we're going to bear the associated costs. Reducing aviation resources and flight training hours is false economy.
Perhaps the more focused answer would be to take a serious reexamination of our present misguided intervention policy and the undefined War on Terror vis-a-vis exhibiting a willingness to sacrifice aviators and equipment to a reduced readiness and sharp edge fighting capabilities.
Consistent with this administration's post-April 2003 military policy, the very idea expressed by the article is FUBAR in the extreme.
"Mass has its own might in warfare"
One of the reasons I'm against the almost total acceptance of women and married privates with 2 or 3 kids into the military, is that I worry about our bench depth.
We can still find ourselves involved in a total war of mass destruction and attrition, where once again the rear is being overrun by hordes with bayonets.
Armor and heavy divisions, troop moving capabilities, bridge building, huge supply stocks all still needed.
The only thing declining in importance is the level of, or at least type of aviation we needed twenty years ago.
Go ahead and cut the flight time budget. Having the Red Chinese fly more than our pilots should be of no concern.
Maybe you would like to wait a couple hours for your air support to arrive. Perhaps you would also like to fight all the targets that get serviced before the ground forces arrive as well.
I will admit that the the aviation casualty rate has been low in this conflict, but we need the training dollars to deal with the ever present Patriot threat.
If the Feds would cut all the namby-pamby bullsh!t domestic welfare spending, we'd have nary a [problem. And taxes could be cut.
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