General: Air fleet wearing down-Warplanes have cracked wings

[babylonsister]

So much for sending the military to war with the proper equipment, as General Pace promised. He didn't mention said equipment could be ancient.

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070508/1a_lede08.art.htm

General: Air fleet wearing down
Warplanes have cracked wings

By Tom Vanden Brook
USA TODAY

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. — The Air Force's fleet of warplanes is older than ever and wearing out faster because of heavy use in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the service's top combat commander.

Gen. Ronald Keys, who leads the Air Combat Command, points to cracked wings on A-10 attack planes and frayed electrical cables on U-2 spy planes.

Compared to 1996, the Air Force now spends 87% more on maintenance for a warplane fleet that is less ready to fly, Air Force records show.

They also show that as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, Air Force and other military aircraft are flying more missions in harsh environments.

Keys said he's concerned that policymakers will only pay attention when a plane either crashes on takeoff or over a city "because a wing falls off."

"I don't want to write a letter, or have my successor write a letter, 'Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith, your son or daughter are dead because the wing fell off on takeoff. We knew it was going to fall off, we just didn't know when.' That's kind of what we're getting down to," Keys said.

more...

[Kagemusha]

1. Dumb question. As A-10's are concerned, can't the wings just be replaced?

Don't call me an expert but I was under the impression that the wings were built so that they could be replaced if they got damaged by ground fire - which is an expected consequence of the A-10's specialized close air support role. We're not talking commercial airliners here.

[Paulie]

6. They can be reinforced, so better than new

Keep in mind the A-10 hasn't been made for decades, and the regular Air Force was actively trying to kill it before it was relegated to the Guard. It wasn't until the first Gulf War that the regular Air Force again considered it an aircraft instead of a piece of shit. Close air support for the ground Army? That's like cleaning latrines...

They don't like that it's not super sonic, multi-role interdictor with lots of bells and electronic gadgets. Drives them crazy because was relatively cheap, the gun used DU rounds that cost like $5 each, instead of million dollar a shot missiles, protects the pilot with it's titanium bathtub, and can fly with half a wing gone. It's almost Ruskie like in its durability in combat. And it has Col. John Boyd's taint on it. :)

So no, they can't just replace the wings as they are no longer made. Look at the B52's... you have the sons of the first pilots back in the 50's piloting them today!

[Kagemusha]

7. Well geez, if they hadn't tried so hard to kill it they might have spare wings.

And yeah, I knew about that history of the USAF hating it, I just wasn't sure if that made it impossible to get spare parts. I guess so. You'd think if Congress spent the funds that they could get someone to make new wings.

[Strelnikov_]

27. Read an article along those lines in 1982

Scientific American or some such.

At that time the Air Force was already trying to kill the program.

The Air Force thought its role should be bombers, missiles and air superiority, the Army is responsible for close ground support.

The Army felt that the helicopter was the future of close ground support, did not want the A-10 as it was an airplane.

Gist of the article was that the lower level folks had an idea of what a valuable close support asset they had on their hands, but it met the 'strategic vision' of neither service.

So, a typical military clusterfuck and SNAFU rolled into one.


And, in the meantime, the A-10 has proven itself to be probably the best ground support aircraft ever created. The day may come when we actually need to defend the nation, when we need its ability to destroy armored spearheads. And they won't be there, because the airframe was abandoned for something much more expensive, not as durable and much less capable.

[originalpckelly]

10. They stopped making the parts and the dies were destroyed.

Actually, I've seen a history channel program about this, they develop hairline fractures in their wings because of the high g loads they take when they pull up from attacking a target.

The A-10 seems to be a very useful air support for the ground weapon system, they really need to consider updating the design so that we'll have a similar concept.

It's my understanding that these suckers can take a real beating and keep on flying, I doubt the F-22 is capable of that sort of thing.

[Kagemusha]

13. The dies were destroyed?...

Do they still have the um, plans, at least? Good god.

[Zywiec]

22. My thoughts exactly.

Why would they destroy the dies? It makes no sense!

[Kagemusha]

24. Oh, it makes sense to me. I just think it's stupid.

You have the dies destroyed so that Congress has no choice but to fund new aircraft in the future.

[meldroc]

26. There are a lot of decommissioned A-10s in the boneyard.

The Air Force has been scavenging them for parts, and refurbishing them and the active A-10s to keep them flying. Obviously, there are only so many spare parts in the boneyard, so the Air Force can only do this for so long.

Of course, the Air Force wants to replace the A-10s with other aircraft, like the JSF, but the fact is that no aircraft, including the flashy new F-22 or JSF, can do the Close-Air-Support job nearly as well as the A-10. The A-10 was purely designed for CAS - it has that old-school straight wing, so it can fly slow and pick its targets and have enough time to aim. It has that monstrous 30mm Gatling cannon running most of the length of the fuselage, firing those giant DU rounds (the gift that keeps on giving :( .) It's armored like a tank, it's designed to be shot up, have large chunks of wing and an entire engine completely blown off, and still make it home.

Compared to this, other aircraft are way too fast for CAS - they'll zoom over the target so fast it's hard to line up a good shot, they're fragile - designed to go fast, but don't have much armor, and they don't have the heavy firepower that's useful for shredding tanks.

Ideally, the Air Force should commission a new special-purpose close-air-support aircraft to replace the A-10, though I don't see that happening, especially with all the corruption in the military and defense industry.

[Captain Hilts]

2. This administration has RUINED the navy and air force. C-5s for short-lift duty in the desert...

cutting the size of the navy to a size smaller than BEFORE WWI.

[Blackhatjack]

3. We never spent more on the military to get less in return, but hey, Halliburton made out OK!

There seems to be 'backdoor' transfers directly to Halliburton and other war profiteers, who fail to deliver on their contracted duties, and take the cash out of the country.

It is beyond shameful the graft and corruption that has occurred on the Bush Administration watch, but it is unforgiveable that our military has been required to work with substandard equipment so that the war profiteers could steal even more.

[1932]

4. If the US gave the troops everything they needed, we'd have terrible inflation.

And if there's one thing Republicans care more about than endless war and creating an atmosphere of fear that makes people support policies that hurt them, it's keeping inflation low so that rich people don't see their massive fortunes lose value just with the passage of time.

[Greyhound]

20. Inflation is so 1980's, we've replaced it with devaluation.

As far as equipping the troops on the ground, we could easily afford to give them the very best in copious quantities if only we hadn't blown several trillion dollars on weapons systems and platforms that serve absolutely no purpose, except to keep much needed technical people employed in unnecessary areas, corporate stock prices high, and generals dicks hard.

[Bitwit1234]

5. What in the world has happened to the money

Look at the defense budget for the last seven years. What happened to the money. First thing. The money for Bush's War does not come out of the money alloted to defense. We have to make that clear.

[babylonsister]

12. Halliburton? Blackwater?? etc., etc., etc.

:shrug:

[Little Wing]

8. Isn't the F22 taking over both of those roles

:eyes:

[atreides1]

14. Yes

It was originally envisioned as an air superiority fighter for use against the Soviet Air Force, but is equipped for ground attack, electronic warfare and signals intelligence roles as well.

Currently their are only 2 deployable F-22 squadrons, the 27th Fighter Squadron stationed at Kadena AB in Japan, and the 94th Fighter Squadron stationed at Langley AFB in Virginia. Three more squadrons are to be stationed at:

90th Fighter Squadron, Elmendorf AFB, Alaska
199th Fighter Squadron, Hickam AFB, Hawaii
531st Fighter Squadron, Holloman AFB, New Mexico

There was also a Navy variant that was to replace the F-14 Tomcat, but the program was canceled in 1993.

But the cost for just one of these little gems is a whopping $120 million as of 2006.

[Little Wing]

15. and if I recall correctly, they were headed to deploy in Okinawa

but then halfway there they realized that the people who programmed the flight computers 'forgot' about the Int'l date line.

[karlrschneider]

16. Which also shut down all nav and comm electronics.

:scared:

[Greyhound]

21. See #19 for some even worse info. n/t

[genie_weenie]

9. Darn! Well I guess we need another supplemental spending bill!

Wink wink wink!

More Trillions of dollars of wealth transfered to the MIC.

[Horse with no Name]

11. Oh? I bet Lockheed could build you some brand new toys

:eyes:

[KansDem]

17. "Cracked wings?" Uh-oh, time for some Liquid Solder!

Available from no-bid Halliburton for a measly $9,995 a pop!

[Bigmack]

18. Look at the bright side....

it's going to cost so damn much to replace all the vehicles/weapons in the Army and Marines, and so damn much to replace all the planes in the Air Farce, that the people of the country - and the Congress - will finally say enough is enough, and cut military spending. We can finally get out of the Imperial Expansion business.

No... wait..... this is Murika.

USA! USA! WE'RE #1 WE'RE #1 USA USA

[Greyhound]

19. At some point you would think that the congressional "overseers"

would begin to notice that all the trillions we've pounded down this rat hole called the defense budget, is just disappearing. But who, you might ask, is responsible for spending all this money we don't have, who's on the armed services committees? Oh yes, that would be;

The Senate
The Democrats
Carl Levin (Michigan)
Chairman

Edward M. Kennedy (Massachusetts)
Robert C. Byrd (West Virginia)
Joseph I. Lieberman (Connecticut)
Jack Reed (Rhode Island)
Daniel K. Akaka (Hawaii)
Bill Nelson (Florida)
E. Benjamin Nelson (Nebraska)
Evan Bayh (Indiana)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York)
Mark L. Pryor (Arkansas)
Jim Webb (Virginia)
Claire McCaskill (Missouri)

The Republiks
John McCain (Arizona)
Ranking Member

John W. Warner (Virginia)
James M. Inhofe (Oklahoma)
Jeff Sessions (Alabama)
Susan M. Collins (Maine)
John Ensign (Nevada)
Saxby Chambliss (Georgia)
Lindsey O. Graham (South Carolina)
Elizabeth Dole (North Carolina)
John Cornyn (Texas)
John Thune (South Dakota)
Mel Martinez (Florida)

The House
Democrats
Ike Skelton, Missouri, Chairman
John Spratt, South Carolina
Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas
Gene Taylor, Mississippi
Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii
Marty Meehan, Massachusetts
Silvestre Reyes, Texas
Vic Snyder, Arkansas
Adam Smith, Washington
Loretta Sanchez, California
Mike McIntyre, North Carolina
Ellen O. Tauscher, California
Robert A. Brady, Pennsylvania
Robert Andrews, New Jersey
Susan A. Davis, California
Rick Larsen, Washington
Jim Cooper, Tennessee
Jim Marshall, Georgia
Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam
Mark Udall, Colorado
Dan Boren, Oklahoma
Brad Ellsworth, Indiana
Nancy Boyda, Kansas
Patrick Murphy, Pennsylvania
Hank Johnson, Georgia
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Joe Courtney, Connecticut
David Loebsack, Iowa
Kirsten Gillibrand, New York
Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania
Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona
Elijah Cummings, Maryland
Kendrick Meek, Florida
Kathy Castor, Florida

Republks
Duncan Hunter, California, Ranking Member
Jim Saxton, New Jersey
John M. McHugh, New York
Terry Everett, Alabama
Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland
Buck McKeon, California
Mac Thornberry, Texas
Walter B. Jones, North Carolina
Robin Hayes, North Carolina
Ken Calvert, California
Jo Ann Davis, Virginia
W. Todd Akin, Missouri
J. Randy Forbes, Virginia
Jeff Miller, Florida
Joe Wilson, South Carolina
Frank A. LoBiondo, New Jersey
Tom Cole, Oklahoma
Rob Bishop, Utah
Michael Turner, Ohio
John Kline, Minnesota
Candice S. Miller, Michigan
Phil Gingrey, Georgia
Mike Rogers, Alabama
Trent Franks, Arizona
Thelma Drake, Virginia
Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington
Michael Conaway, Texas
Geoff Davis, Kentucky

Apparently they can agree on one thing, nobody's going to start asking questions about where our money went.

The vaunted F-22 is the air superiority aircraft for the 21st century that is to replace the the aging F-15. Design specs were created in 1981 and Lockheed won the contract in 1991 and the first production craft was delivered in 2003. The original plan was for 750 aircraft to be produced, but that number has shrunk to 183. At a cost of $361 million per copy (GAO figure includes all costs) it is the most expensive fighter ever produced by several orders of magnitude. Even at the current actual copy cost of $120 million per plane, it is over 4 times more expensive than the plane it is to replace, the F-15 Tomcat. A plane incidentally that has an actual combat record of 104 kills with not one loss.

So to sum up, our military geniuses, with bi-partisan congressional support going back over 25 years, have blown our children's future in order to buy 183 aircraft to replace ~450 of the world's most deadly air fighters, an aircraft that is so superior to anything else flying that literally nothing can touch it. It is an aircraft designed to fight a war that nobody else on the planet can ever hope to win.

One last thing, this boondoggle isn't designed for ground support, the A-10's role.

[ThomWV]

23. So ... do these things fly more hours than commercial aircraft?

Because its hard to see any reason why they would be flown in any way more robust (and consequently wearing out the planes more quickly) than commercial aircraft - after all, the "insurgents" don't have anit aircraft guns.

[Kagemusha]

25. Well, I have to quibble with you here.

The whole nature of close air support is flying low and doing a lot of flying downward at an angle and then pulling up. That is itself a reason why they would be flown in a way more robust than commercial aircraft. There's a lot of other planes that don't have that excuse but, in the A-10's case I can understand it.

OTOH the A-10 was made to be abuse-friendly. It's just that even they have limits.