USAF to cut Ops Squadrons’ flying hours program 13 percent in FY-08

Date: August 3, 2007

The desire to fully fund the Air Force flying hour training programs in fiscal year 2008 despite a 10 percent roll back in funding will lead to operations units losing roughly 13 percent of their live-flight exercise time, an Air Combat Command official tells Inside the Air Force.

The Air Force has traditionally flown 300,000 flying hours per-year. However, the cuts in FY-08 will drop that number by 30,000, Col. Eric Best, chief of ACC’s flight operations division, said in an Aug. 1 telephone interview. These cuts are expected to last through FY-13 and beyond.

“We are giving [the training units] 100 percent of their requirements because they are important to maintain the syllabus flow and the various test programs,” Best said. “What that does is it puts an extra burden on the operational squadrons out there. The number is more like [a] 13-percent reduction to the operational squadrons.”

This means a unit that requires 10,000 training hours will only receive 8,700, which “will cause problems,” he said, noting ACC officials are in the process of putting the finishing touches on the FY-08 flying hour plan.

“We anticipate there will be some training and readiness issues as a result of that reduction,” Best added.

House lawmakers inserted $403 million into their fiscal year 2008 defense authorization bill in an attempt to offset flying hour and other training cuts experienced by all of the services, according to documents and sources.

Lawmakers allotted $250 million to bridge Defense Department-wide training shortfalls and another $153 million -- $62 million for the Air Force and $91.6 million for the Navy -- for aviation maintenance shortfalls, according to a House Armed Services Committee report accompanying the proposed legislation.

The committee passed the authorization bill by a 58-0 vote on May 10. The entire House approved the proposed legislation May 17 by a 397-27 vote.

If approved, the funding is expected to offset the 10 percent cut in training flying hours currently experienced by the Air Force, a congressional staffer told ITAF in June.

“The intention really was to buy back maintenance shortfalls, which will in-turn allow [the services to] purchase back some of the shortfalls in flying hours because you already bought the maintenance,” the staffer said in a May 21 telephone interview.

ACC officials are waiting to see how much Congress authorizes and/or appropriates before they determine how much the additional funding would offset the flying hour cuts, Best said this week.

To that end, Best also believes units returning from combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will become the “lowest priority for sorties . . . for a period of time.”

Air Force training requirements mandate active duty pilots to complete a certain number of flying hours per month based on the aircraft platform, he said. If they do not meet that goal -- either due to weather or other reasons out of the pilot’s hands -- the airman is given a “probationary period” of several months to make up the missed time.

“Because of the lack of sorties and hours out there, what you’re seeing is, many more people who are not meeting the monthly requirements and they’re balancing that probationary period as a result,” Best said. “One month of not making [the flying hour goal] is not a big deal. Two or three months in a row is.”

The flying hour chief said he expects this trend to continue as long as the 10 percent cuts are in place.

ACC personnel also are working to find ways that will help them meet -- or at least offset -- the reductions. Currently, pilots are primarily training for purely wartime missions, Best said.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley has reintroduced the concept of aggressor fighter squadrons that specialize in adversary tactics, he said. The two squadrons imitate red forces during fighter squadrons’ training missions, relieving the individual unit of having to provide its own adversary replication.

In addition, the cuts to the flying hour program have led a charge in studying how simulators can help fill voids created by the lack of live-flight time.

The Air Force has robust high-fidelity simulators for several aircraft platforms, including the service’s primary air-to-air fighter the F-15C, that allow pilots in different simulators at separate locations to connect and fly a practice mission together, Best said.

However, the acquisition of simulators over the past few years has become a challenge. In the past, the Air Force would pay an aircraft manufacturer -- such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin -- to develop a platform simulator and provide instructors and technicians.

The simulators remained the property of the contractor -- similar to a lease -- but were installed in a building on an air base, he said. But now there is a law prohibiting this acquisition practice that mandates that all the services purchase the simulators.

The law ended up setting an F-16 Block 40 simulator acquisition program back about a year, Best said.

“We’re working very, very hard to bring this capability on line [but], it just takes money, it takes time to get it out there and then once it’s there, we next have to make sure we’ve got the right training events [and] that we’re using it to its best advantage.”

The Air Force attempts to hold four Virtual Flag exercises each year in which pilots in simulators all over the world are networked together and tasked with a specific mission.

Additionally, service officials are in the process of planning a month of distributed mission -- or simulated -- operations. During a planning exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, NV, last week, ACC officials developed seven scenarios for the September exercise.

Officials chose September mainly because funding for flying hours tends to be “lighter,” Best said. The hope is that the units with the advanced simulators realize the assets available and use them more regularly to link-up with other units in the months and years ahead. -- Marcus Weisgerber

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Them poor bastards.....here we(they) go again

Plenty of "non-essentials" to cut over in the Support and Med groups.

How's about this instead.....No more schmancy zillion dollar "award winning" chowhalls, no more skate parks for the brats to vandalize. Hell, eliminate AAFES on every base with a Wal Mart close by. Except for the cops and CE's Red Horse and Prime Beef civilianize the whole damn Support Group. Now take all those savings and put it in CPFH.

Of course none of that will happen...the guys who actually make the mission happen will continue to get screwed (while the rest of the base knocks off at 1530)

The first thing they can do is cut the T-birds...as they are lame anyway.

The first thing they can do is cut the T-birds...as they are lame anyway.

I like the idea of getting rid of the T-birds. They are an embarrassment to the F-16 world.