Posted on 01/11/2008 4:39:08 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Air Force Fighter Fleet in 'Crisis'
By RICHARD LARDNER – 12 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Years of stress on the Air Force's aging jet fighter fleet have led to serious structural problems that could grow worse even after expensive repairs are made, senior service officials said Thursday.
Gen. John Corley, the top officer at Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va., called the situation a "crisis" that would be best solved by an infusion of costly new aircraft rather than fixing jets that are 25 years old.
The mechanical troubles, most acute in the F-15 Eagles used to protect the United States, also have led to a patchwork approach to filling critical air missions at home and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With nearly a third of the F-15 fleet grounded due to a defective support beam in the aircraft's frame, other fighter aircraft, including F-16s and new F-22s, are being shifted from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It's a rob Peter to pay Paul," Corley said at a Pentagon news conference. "It's unprecedented to have an air superiority fleet that's on average 25 years old."
The Air Force's dilemma has been largely overshadowed by the equally urgent demands from the Army and Marine Corps for new equipment to replace the battle gear worn down by more than six years of war. That changed on Nov. 2 when an F-15C aircraft broke in two during a training flight over Missouri.
The pilot, Maj. Stephen Stilwell, barely had time to eject from the front half of the F-15. His left shoulder was dislocated and his left arm shattered as the cockpit blew apart.
An investigation of the crash released Thursday concluded that a defective aluminum beam in the frame cracked, causing the $42 million jet to disintegrate in the air. There was no pilot error.
More troubling, however, were the findings of a parallel examination that determined as many as 163 of the workhorse F-15s also have the flawed beams, called longerons. The aircraft remain grounded as the Air Force tries to determine how broad the problem is and whether fixes should be made. Another 19 of the aircraft have yet to be inspected and also remain grounded.
In the report on Stilwell's crash, Col. William Wignall, the lead investigator, said that prior to Stilwell's flight, "no inspection requirements existed for detecting a crack in the longeron."
The F-15A through D models were built by McDonnell Douglas. That company merged with the defense manufacturing giant, Boeing Co., in August 1997.
The faulty longerons "failed to meet blueprint specifications," according to the Air Force. No decision has been reached as to whether Boeing might be liable for the repairs, however.
"This is the starting point of answering that question," said Lt. Gen. Donald Hoffman, a senior Air Force acquisition official. "So now that we have the evidence of what happened in (Stilwell's) case, it will all boil down to what our contractual relationship was with the manufacturer at the time."
Nearly 260 of the A through D model F-15s, first fielded in the mid-1970s, were returned to flight status Tuesday following fleet-wide inspections.
The Air Force's fleet of 224 newer F-15E Strike Eagles do not have defective longerons. Those jets, whose role is more oriented toward ground attack missions, were temporarily grounded after Stilwell's crash, but returned to service shortly thereafter.
The longeron helps support the cockpit and strengthen the jet as it moves through high-stress maneuvers while traveling hundreds of miles per hour.
Corley said even if the longerons in the older F-15s are replaced — a procedure that costs $250,000 per beam — there's no guarantee that other parts won't go bad.
"You may wind up with an airplane that is already so far beyond it's economic service life, that to throw a quarter of million dollars at it to replace a bad part may be a bad idea," he said. "That may be buying way too much risk. We've already bought too much risk because we've bought too little iron over the years."
The F-16, fielded in the late 1970s, is undergoing an extensive modernization program, Corley said. So, too, is the tank-killing A-10, a 30-year old plane used to support troops on the ground.
"This is systemic," Corley said.
The Air Force has fielded more than 90 F-22 Raptors, a stealth fighter made by defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. But these aircraft cost $160 million apiece and the Pentagon has decided to buy only 183. The Air Force has said it needs 381 F-22s and has support on Capitol Hill for a larger acquisition that would keep require tens of billions of dollars.
The F-35 Lightning is another new fighter that is being built but won't be in use for several more years.
Corley said the Air Force does not want to buy more F-15s.
"I flew this airplane 30 years ago," said Corley, an F-15 instructor pilot in 1979 when he was a captain. "It was best of breed at its time. It's not anymore. All options on the table, yes. But is it where I would turn to now? No."
By contrast, the F-22 is a modern plane that meets the Air Force's needs for an air combat jet, he said.
"The hot running production line that the United States Air Force has right now for fighter aircraft is the F-22," Corley said. "That line has the capacity. So you'd have to ask yourself, 'Can I buy F-22s?'"
$250,000 or $161 Million??? hmmmmmm The original design is 30 years old but the current version is not. They are a very good tool and meet the need. The F22 is sexy but how many of those are really needed.
“$250,000 or $161 Million??? hmmmmmm”
It’s how the govt spends our money.
What a crock. Typical MSM story. The beam has reached it's service life. It is not "defective" it lasted almost exactly as long as it was suppose to. When you brakes wear out on your car are they "defective"?
$250,000 is chump change. Why haven’t they started a repair program already? Answer AF politics.
The answer is to build 25,000 hi tech but still cheap piston/prop aircraft like the Skyraider or the P51 or basically any pre=jet prop attack aircraft and put the most modern missiles on them, would be quicker to build this fleet and a whole lot cheaper. The other nations cannot afford to mass build even copies of a Raptor and its a sucker game to chase them by trying to out do them, the answer is LOTS of cheap aircraft and un-manned aircraft.
Limit the production of the solid gold planes to enough to get the job done. The days of dogfights is over.
You're right. It is basically a little over one man-year (give or take a little). That is 1 person for 1 year. That's nothing! (in DoD terms)
I concur. There are a lot of missions that just require bombs on target. If you don’t have to worry about enemy fighters or SAMS then there is no need to put extra stress on an expensive airframe.
That being said:
1. You still need to fly these a lot to keep pilots trained
2. AF planes ARE getting very old. The last B-52 rolled off in 1962 and most of today’s fighters were designed in the late 60s, early 70s. It is a crime that it takes nearly a generation to produce a new fighter.
What part of the AF budget process is faulty? Do you even have a clue about what the Air Force asked for in its five year budget and what was approved by Congress? What would you have done differently?
Interesting how the AP writer carefully manages to ignore the F-117 which has proven itself very effective, especially in Iraq.
While an apples and corn comparison, it is worth noting that the B-52, an aircraft that is over 50 years old, remains one of the Air Force’s workhorses. In fact, some of today’s B-52 flight crews are flying the same aircraft flown by their fathers!
The article also fails to note that in ANY offensive campaign, the Air Force is one ONE part of the total airborne offensive weapons capability of America. The author deftly manages to avoid including the contributions made by Navy and Marine fighters.
So, while the article attempts to make us feel uneasy about the capability of the Air Force, IMO, we have little to worry about. The Air Force will eventually get its fighter problems sorted out and the US still has plenty of fighters available for air combat roles (should they be needed) courtesy of the Navy and Marines.
The airplanes aren't just a platform for missiles. They are an integrated weapons system. The weapons integrate with the high tech electronics on board the aircraft. Weapons like the AMRAAM use the aircraft radar system to guide the weapon close enough to a target to acquire it on the missile's own radar system. You can't just strap a missile on a WWII fighter and have it work.
There are a lot of planes out there that are as good or better than the F-15 (The F1 and MIG 29). There are also a lot of high tech SAMS out there that are a threat to non-stealth aircraft. That's why we need a stealthy fighter and not some WWII Antiques. Also, the more planes you have the more support personnel you need to keep them flying. You need about 14 people per aircraft for maintenance and each of those folks need to get fed, paid, etc. There comes a point when you reach a diminishing return.
The idea of using a lot of cheap planes isn't really viable because you need a lot of expendable pilots to fly them. The US Air Force philosophy is to use fewer aircraft with better training and technology. We tried it the other way during WWII and lost as many as 60% of the aircraft on a single bombing mission.
Probably because the F-117 is being retired even as we speak.
Any target worth destroying is going to be defended by SAMs and Air to Air support if it hasn't been knocked out by the F-15s.
The US Air Force had 62% of the aircraft during Desert Storm, but took out 92% of the targets. I'm not downplaying to role of the Navy and Marines, but their aircraft don't have the range of the Air Force planes because they're limited by the need to fly from carriers. The Marines are primarily used for tactical targets and close air support and one of the key missions of the Navy is to protect the fleet.
Where do you get 25,000 pilots willing to fly “cheap crap”?
Not if you’re going against the Taliban or Al Qaeda. The exception would be shoulder fired SAMS, but those are likely older versions that we have good CM for. And against those targets, they probably won’t even know you’re there until things blow up real good.
The question is not even remotely that simple ... that's the sort of thinking I expect from the MSM.
1) $250K does not guarantee a solution long term
2) $161 Mil is the total program cost for each plane, based on the size of the production run. Make more, and the cost per plane drops. Some of that $161 Mil has already been spent; it's the R&D.
We need more Raptors.
Much of the blame lies with a Democrat controlled Congress, and with the Clinton administration, failing to properly support the R&D programs. That failure to properly support includes both inadequate funding and poorly defined requirements. The Air Force itself bears some of the blame, as well.
Most of that $161M is amortization for development costs. The per-unit manufacturing costs are lower. If you increase the production run, then R&D and tooling get amortized among more fighters, lowering the per-unit cost, and allowing the per-unit price to go down
But perhaps you CAN use one or more UAVs to fly along WITH the fighter to supplement its missile load with missiles that can be launched from the UAV but guided by the fighter's electronics
The problem is that we may not always be going up against an enemy that doesn't have an Air Force. It takes years to spin up a production line for a fighter aircraft. Once the aircraft reaches early production, you need to develop tactics to take advantage of the aircraft's capabilities. Once you have the first few airplanes and have initial tactics you need to train pilots. The pilot training pipeline for the F-15 was two years long - about eight months of that was in the F-15. That got you a minimally qualified wingman. It took at least another year to qualify him as a flight lead.
We need to have the aircraft in the inventory and have trained pilots at the beginning of any hostilities.
Does anyone else remeber when the C-17 was about to come on line that the C-141s started to be declared unsafe due to wing spar issues. The number of C-17 purchased went up.
Now the F-15s are grounded with 60% now allowed tot fly. Is the Airforce trying to get more F-22s?
That may be a possibility in the future, but I don't think the technology is available today to make it happen in the Air to Air mission. UAVs are pretty good for surface attack missions because the scenarios are less dynamic. There are still a lot of visual cues from the cockpit that are needed in the air to air mission.
Some of the problems that have to be looked at are visually identifying targets. A passenger jet coming out of Iranian airspace looks a lot like a bomber on a radar. The Rules of Engagement require a visual ID on the target before you launch missiles. That turns the fight into BFM/ACM requiring a lot of communications, teamwork, and instant decision making. A UAV doesn't provide the Situational Awareness required to be effective.
The F-15 problems aren't just cropping up. The aircraft has had several structural problems with the wings that have limited the amount of Gs the aircraft can pull for the last 15 years. The airplanes are worn out. They started entering service in the mid to late seventies. The Air to Air mission is a lot tougher on the aircraft than other missions. The airplanes have to make 8G turns and maneuvers that are violent enough to render a pilot unconcious if he isn't properly trained and equiped. The daily twisting and turning has weakened the frame of the plane.
To put it into perspective - If you owned a 30 year old car that had a rusted out frame would you continue fixing it or would you bite the bullet and pay for a new one?
“We are operating a fleet of aircraft to battle the now defunct Soviet Union, except our current enemies are uneducated, third world thugs armed with AKs and RPGs.”
You really need to pay a little more attention to what’s going on in Asia.
HMMM....
I think you are right and I WAS KIDDING (kind of like a conspiracy..)
It should be put into perspective, national security is the governments number 1 job. SS, Medicare, Welfare are all drains on what it SHOULD be spending money on.
I say buy the Raptor’s and cut SS benefits and thank the generations before us who decided to raid the “lock box” in the first place.
SS was always a Ponsey Scheme, no matter who raided the “funds”.
It was doomed to failure that day it was signed into law.
Otherwise, I agree that we fulfill our constitutional obligations and fully fund our military at the expense of social programs.
I remember hearing this song before. It was the wrong tune back in the 60's and it's the wrong tune still.
We had to learn a hard lesson with missile carriers only during the Vietnam unpleasantness,that's why even the F-22 mounts a gun today. Trying to regress to less capable, but numerous, aircraft and putting too much faith in UAV's is a prescription for disaster.IMHO.
Navy & Marine fighters need the backing of the heavy cavalry if they are to take on major trouble makers like Iran or China.
True, but what percentage of those targets were destroyed by bombs dropped by B-1s, B-2s, B-52s versus fighters? They aren't the same thing.
I'm not bashing the AF, I'm just pointing out the fact that the entire air combat complement does not reside with the AF.
Not the same discussion.
More importantly, I think the F-22 and the F-35 will be the last single-seat combat aircraft. Technology is advancing quickly, probably much faster than doctrine. Some of the autonomous stuff being developed by Boeing is incredible.
Perhaps it’s time to go back to first principles: the significant mission of the air force is to put bombs on a variety of targets (strategic and tactical, static and dynamic)target and shoot the bad guy’s airplanes out of the sky. What is the most combat effective way to do this, bounded by logistics and support (including R&D, manufacturing capacity, cost, supportability, etc)?
I think the handwriting is on the wall: manned combat aircraft are on the decline. The mission soon will be more effectively and efficiently performed by unmanned aircraft.
Technology happens and upsets the apple cart: cavalry, coastal artillery, navigators, bombadiers, gunners, reconnaissance, etc.
It is part of the discussion-
Bombers are not the only part of the airforce which will be vital for the navy,the air superiority fighters are as important & increasingly so.The Super Hornet & F-35 B/Cs are just not in the same league as the F-14 WRT modern threats-they will need the F-15 & F-22 to clean up the bad guys.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1951577/posts
Time compliance technical order inspections have discovered nine other aircraft with longeron fatigue-cracks. Additionally, approximately 40 percent of inspected aircraft have at least one longeron that does not meet blueprint specifications."
Robins team believes last snag cleared in F-15 groundings
A thinning of the longeron at a key stress point - possibly due to a manufacturing defect - may be the root cause of the mishap and the cracks found in the eight aircraft."More than likely it is a manufacturing issue and we have pulled all the Boeing material discrepancy reports," the group commander said. "So far, we have not been able to isolate it to a particular production run or series. The cracks show up in aircraft as old as 1978 and as new as 1985."
Recurring checks had not called for a review of the area in the past.
"It was a 25,000 to 100,000-hour part," the colonel stressed. "So it was not included in our depot and phase inspections. It was designed to significantly outlast the aircraft."
However, the Robins team has learned that a number of factors create additional stress on the component - a splice joint in the two-piece longeron with different material thicknesses coming together, reduced width proceeding from the joint, angle variations and changes in the canopy sill.
"So a large amount of activity occurs in that single spot," Niemantsverdriet acknowledged. "It's like a creek that narrows down, making the water flow faster."
Outsource it to China, DUH!
“The question is not even remotely that simple ... that’s the sort of thinking I expect from the MSM.”
It is that simple and thanks for the insult.
“1) $250K does not guarantee a solution long term”
It promises a short term solution. The cost for a long term solution is most likely higher but still less than 10% the cost of a new raptor.
“2) $161 Mil is the total program cost for each plane, based on the size of the production run. Make more, and the cost per plane drops. Some of that $161 Mil has already been spent; it’s the R&D.”
Regardless its many many times the cost of the interim solution. The raptor is a great plane but the F15 still beats nearly all the competition out there. My point is you don’t need a 160 million dollar hammer for a 10 cent nail. The $10 hammer will sometimes work just as well. The B52 is a good example. The airframe is good and by performing maintenance, adding new engines, and new electronics we are getting a solid weapons system for much less than the alternative.
“We need more Raptors.”
No, we want more Raptors because we all like sexy new things. Need has yet to be determined. The Pentagon in their infinite wisdom doesn’t agree. Just like the other services the Air Force will always want more and better.
You're correct. Our national defense has developed doctrine and assigned missions based on an overall defense strategy. The Air Force has the heavy bombers, the Army has helicopters to support ground troops, the Navy and Marines are equipped to defend the ships and support operations at sea and Littoral operations.
The line between fighters and bombers is kind of fuzzy. The F117 is actually a bomber - it has no air to air capability. The F-16, F-18, and F-15E can be a fighter, surface attack, or close air platform depending on how they are armed for a particular mission.
During Desert Storm, the only aircraft that flew in the most heavily defended areas were the 117s.
The British Tornadoes were used to destroy runways and because of their low-level tactics and munitions, suffered the highest losses per aircraft type. That's the price of preparing to fight the last war and not looking to the future.
Nope. If you include the R&D costs, each of the 184 Raptors we're buying cost well north of $300 million each.
Sticker Shock: Estimating the Real Cost of Modern Fighter Aircraft
F-22A Raptor:
Unit procurement costs: $ 177.6 Million
Program unit costs: $ 338.8 Million (based on the current projection of of 184 aircraft)
It's the unit procurement costs that Japan and Australia are looking at, and comparing it to the Program Unit Costs of around $114 million per F-35 that they will have to pay, and asking why not just buy Raptors. Problem is, their F-35 costs include the R&D costs, whereas IF we were to export the F-22 then some premium for R&D would be added to each export unit, making the F-22 less attractive vis-a-vis the F-35.
It’s a Ponzi scheme alright. It could have been run as an investment fund and actually worked so long as those who didn’t put in up to that point were not included in the payouts.
We should sell to the Aussies and Brits to help bring down the early production costs.
It promises a short term solution. The cost for a long term solution is utterly unknown to you. Unless you're working for USAF or Boeing and personally involved in the problem. And it entirely depends on what you mean by "long term solution". More Raptors are a long term solution. Very long term. And available right now. The line is up and running.
Airframes wear out. The F-15 fleet has been driven very hard, and that's a good thing. But there's a price for that, in maintenance and availability. And that misses the point that the F15, much as I love the bird, is an old design and no longer dominant, as it was in the 1970s.
I'll gladly stand corrected, if I've gotten facts wrong.
If our government ran crime, it wouldn't pay...
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