Aging airplanes

[bert]

Don't really know the drama that bert is speaking of

Google Darlene Druyun and the tanker lease the news stories will mention if you are curious. It is one of the reasons McCain feels the way he does about the AF and Boeing.

 

[PropStop]

P-3's are just coming into their prime.

 

[gregsivers]

We are going to run out of airplanes by the time we are in production of the F-35.

At least the Navy has the Rhino to fill the gap. The AF has 2 operational (not test or training) squadrons of F-22s.

Pretty soon we will see ANG squadrons losing their airplanes due to the needs of the AD. (Or the thunderchickens, as what happened to the Ft Smith AK Viper unit)

Thats one of the reasons VFA-201 was de-comm'd. They flew F/A-18A+s, so older than the Cs the active squadrons had, but a lot fewer hours.

Now if you want to talk about beat up aircraft, how about 60Bs. Pushing 20 years and all, at least in my sqdn, have at least 10k hours. Its great when the wires just start grounding and shorting each other.

 

[MasterBates]

Considering the Bravos save a handful, have never been back to Depot..

Just PMI.

 

[bert]

Now if you want to talk about beat up aircraft, how about 60Bs. Pushing 20 years and all, at least in my sqdn, have at least 10k hours.

Helicopters don't even start hitting their stride until they pass 15k....

 

[bert]

I also agree it is hard to vote for Airbus for the tanker contract but I really think Boeing shot themselves in the foot on that when they got caught in the cookie jar.

Don't worry about Boeing: you can bet your house on that one.

 

[Gatordev]

Considering the Bravos save a handful, have never been back to Depot..

Just PMI.

What do you think PMI is? All our birds would get stripped down to depot level and worked by depot level workers, they just happened to be in our hangar. For us, it was far more efficient than putting on a ship and craning it off the pier in San Diego (or where ever they go for depot...Texas I think).

 

[A4sForever]

....I really think Boeing shot themselves in the foot on that when they got caught in the cookie jar.

 

[phrogpilot73]

I couldn't agree more (Boeing Vertol that is!)

 

[Flash]

Pretty soon we will see ANG squadrons losing their airplanes due to the needs of the AD. (Or the thunderchickens, as what happened to the Ft Smith AK Viper unit)

That is a new one, I would hate to ask but is that more than just a nasty rumor or do you have anything to back it up.......

 

[Flash]

Don't worry about Boeing: you can bet your house on that one.

I have heard that they could split the contract, a percentage going to Boeing and a percentage going to Airbus.

It spreads the wealth around, the KC-330 would be built in the Alabama and it mitigates the risk of relying on one platform. Of course, buying the KC-777 could do some of the same.......

http://www.eads.com/800/en/investor/News_and_Events/news_ir/2005/2005/en_20050622_Mobile.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/286578_air27.html

 

[Swanee]

That is a new one, I would hate to ask but is that more than just a nasty rumor or do you have anything to back it up.......

It's an exaggeration to an extent and what a lot of Guard guys that I have talked with fear as the next step in the evolution of ANG/AF structuring. They see the Va ANG unit "sharing" Iron with the 1FW. There is a fight right now to even have an F-22 with a Va ANG tail flash on it, with conflicting stories going either way. The guard guys say that come hell or high water it will happen, whereas the AD 1FW guys say to hell with the ANG, those are 1FW (27th and 92nd? squadron IIRC) airplanes and the guard guys are there just to complement the AD staff. There are 192nd (Va ANG) FW crew chiefs (plane captains in Navy speak) without an airplane to put their names on. From the last BRAC Guard units that lost airplanes but stayed open are now Engine rebuild centers. Syracuse is slated to lose the first of their F-16s as soon as next year, but won't take delivery on a Reaper (!) until 2011 at the earliest.


If you look at what happened in Ft Smith Arkansas before they transitioned to A-10s, they lost a go to war F-16 because the Thunderbirds crashed one. As a result the Guard was sent into a state of panic because they had to adjust a deployment cycle due to the fact that Ft Smith had too many hangar queens and not enough airplanes to send on a deployment and still keep their pilots at home current. My old man was the F-16 Fighter Capabilities Manager at ACC/ANG HQ at the time. He and his guys fought it kicking and screaming, but lost in the end. What happens when we lose another one and a Guard unit can't deploy? They will have to consolidate the community again, and chances are that if a Guard unit has what an AD unit needs, the guard unit will have to give up their iron.

As the F-22 and the F-35 come online more, I am willing to bet that you will see more units doing what the Va ANG unit is doing and "share" iron. Shaw, Kirtland, Davis Monthan, Luke, Boise (and many others) all have AD units and Reserve/Guard units on the same base. It would be easy to make those units "share" the F-35. Suddenly you don't have to buy as many airplanes and you have more people to work on them and fly them.

Know that I am a 24 year old punk wannabe with nothing better to do with my time than lurk around here trying to have a little taste of the life that I am trying to enter; but I have spent some time with my old man and quite a few of his buddies (O-5s and O-6s at the HQ and wing king level), and I have spent some time "pledging" guard units and doing a lot of listening over a few beers. One of the questions I ask when I am pledging a guard unit is simply, " where do you see the Unit/ANG/AF /Military going in my career?" They speak of the single seat single engine guys that want to kill the A-10 and CAS altogether in the AF. They talk about the Patch wearing Eagle drivers who are in charge and don't care if they have to lay-off (force shape) 20,000 airmen to get one more squadron of F-22s. They talk about the missile geeks and computer nerds that think that UCAS's are the future (and they probably are). A lot of the guys have some very real fears that bad things may come before anything will get any better.

So perhaps it's just rumblings from the rumor mill, but they sound like they are getting pretty loud to me. And, I have had more than a few AF/ANG guys tell me that right now they advise me to go Navy to fly simply because they feel it's a more protected career than in the AF right now (and it's also cooler :icon_wink).

 

[Flash]

It's an exaggeration........

If you look at what happened in Ft Smith Arkansas before they transitioned to A-10s, they lost a go to war F-16 because the Thunderbirds crashed one. As a result the Guard was sent into a state of panic because they had to adjust a deployment cycle due to the fact that Ft Smith had too many hangar queens and not enough airplanes to send on a deployment and still keep their pilots at home current. My old man was the F-16 Fighter Capabilities Manager at ACC/ANG HQ at the time. He and his guys fought it kicking and screaming, but lost in the end. What happens when we lose another one and a Guard unit can't deploy? They will have to consolidate the community again, and chances are that if a Guard unit has what an AD unit needs, the guard unit will have to give up their iron.

.........right now they advise me to go Navy to fly simply because they feel it's a more protected career than in the AF right now (and it's also cooler :icon_wink).

Nice post, but it makes no sense to me a whole ANG squadron would not deploy because the Thuderbirds lost an airplane. The Blues had several 'spare' aircraft that did not have numbers on the tail (at least two '7' aircraft too) that they had in P'cola, it would make sense that the T'birds would have the same.

Did the Ft Smith guys have the same Block that the T'birds fly? If that is the case, how does the loss of one aircraft to the T'birds affect their entire deployment? It seems to me that could not have been the only factor in the decision. Could it be sour grapes? Then again, I have learned that the USAF and its components do many things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.......come to think of it, so does the Navy........

 

[Swanee]

Nice post, but it makes no sense to me a whole ANG squadron would not deploy because the Thuderbirds lost an airplane. The Blues had several 'spare' aircraft that did not have numbers on the tail (at least two '7' aircraft too) that they had in P'cola, it would make sense that the T'birds would have the same.

Did the Ft Smith guys have the same Block that the T'birds fly? If that is the case, how does the loss of one aircraft to the T'birds affect their entire deployment? It seems to me that could not have been the only factor in the decision. Could it be sour grapes? Then again, I have learned that the USAF and its components do many things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.......come to think of it, so does the Navy........

I think the squadron ended up deploying, but there was more to it. I think they flew block 30s and the Thunderbirds actually converted it to a Block 32 (an engine switch, which makes no sense to me, so I could be wrong here). The F-16 stockpile is so short that those reserve airplanes for the T-Birds are flying in squadrons. The bottom line is that the Thunderbirds crashed an airplane and there simply wasn't anymore available either at AMARC or anywhere else. Typical AF mentality of having some spares, but since they are sitting around might as well give them to a unit that needs it, but then they aren't spares anymore. It had to come from somewhere and Ft Smith got the shit end of the stick.

I believe the fight included the fact that Ft Smith had a couple of airplanes at the Depot in Hill, a couple of hangar queens sitting around, now they are short an airplane and they were trying to gear up for a deployment. They had to send guys to other units to fly and had to coordinate getting another airplane from another squadron to go over to the Mid East. Trying to get 3 squadrons of the same block to share airplanes at the same time is probably hard enough, I'm sure it was a bear trying to find another airplane to go, but they did. There is/was a lot of sour grapes going on about it. The ANG guys feel like ACC totally screwed them for their poster boys and girls, but I guess that is just the breaks. Realize that I only got one side of the story, so I'm sure there is something I am missing out on.