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Newbie Joined: Aug 22, 2007 Posts: 16 Status: Offline

Now more than 180 f-15c have been indefinitely grounded as conclusion. These F-15s are stationed at many so-called "alert" sites around the country, where planes and pilots stand ready to take off at a moment's notice to intercept hijacked airliners and guard protected airspace. So we may expect that it is difficult for the Air Force to accomplish its mission and train properly pilots. With 220 f-15es, 260 f-15cs and some f-22, not only its mission for Iraq, Aafganistan and America air defence can air force sustain smoothly but proper training? How do you think?

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Newbie Joined: Aug 22, 2007 Posts: 16 Status: Offline

i guess that operation available f-22s are maximum 48 aircrafts : 27fs 18; 94fs 18(?) ; 90fs 12(?).

Elite 1K Joined: Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 1034 Status: Offline

We have plenty of coverage for our NORAD mission. Only because of the major shuffle needed because of the F-15 grounding did you see it hyped up in the news. One news report here they hyped up the fact that Canada was involved now because of our lack of fighters...what a crock...Canada IS part of NORAD and routinely flies NORAD missions. Locally, here at Langley, the alert jets are F-16's out of Vermont so we had no loss of coverage for D.C.

Newbie Joined: Jan 16, 2008 Posts: 1 Status: Offline

In this weeks issue of Aviation Week in the article "Flawed Eagles" the author quotes the cost of repair per aircraft at $10,000 for the part and $250,000 to install. If this is correct, that works out to less than $50 million to fix the entire 182 aircraft with the problem! Being that this is about half the flyaway cost for a new Raptor, why isn't this a done deal already?

Because the Air Force wants to replace the Eagles with more Raptors and therefore will make the situation worse in the short to mid term for future benefits. Even if this means a short to mid term problem in air coverage, pilot flying hours, mission availability and further airframe wear due to a lower number of bird performing the same number of missions.

$50 million to fix this problem and then $100 million to fix the next problem and the one after that and the one after that, Eagles were not designed to be flying much beyond this.

Senior member Joined: Dec 14, 2006 Posts: 473

KevinF wrote:

In this weeks issue of Aviation Week in the article "Flawed Eagles" the author quotes the cost of repair per aircraft at $10,000 for the part and $250,000 to install. If this is correct, that works out to less than $50 million to fix the entire 182 aircraft with the problem! Being that this is about half the flyaway cost for a new Raptor, why isn't this a done deal already?

Congress doesn't just hand out money Willy Nilly. I think that there should be a lot of thought given to this issue before deciding to take a plan of action. I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to replace the substandard longerons, however this issue may help retire some of the F-15s in exchange for more F-22s. At least this issue might help bang it through Congress's and the public's head that we need to start producing more F-22's, so that we can eventually retire the F-15s.

Another thing to consider is time: Another thing to consider is how many longerons are in inventory, how long do they take to manufacture, how long does it take to R&R a longeron? Suppose we only have 20 in inventory? Suppose it takes two years to manufacture all the longerons. It sounds like from the amount of labor involved that a longeron R&R is pretty substantial. Suppose it takes an additional two years to install all the longerons. To me it wouldn't be beyond belief, for it to take four years to get all these aircraft back into service. By that time shouldn't we have more F-22's and JSFs coming on line to fill the slots? Perhaps by the time we can get these aircraft back into service, it's time for their retirement.

Does the manufacturing for the longerons require special tooling? If so, does the tooling and blueprints (manufacturing instructions) still exist? I think the tooling and blueprints (manufacturing instructions) were supposed to be destroyed several years ago, however I think they may have received an extension because of foreign orders. Anyhow if the tooling and blueprints (manufacturing instructions) are no longer in existence it may not be practical to manufacture replacement longerons anymore.

Somewhere the line needs to be drawn. It's like my first car with nearly 200000 miles on it, a transmission, rear end, and main bearings starting to go out; a body that is hardly nothing but rust, riding on a set of new $400 worth of tires. Eventually it gets to the point that it is foolish to keep investing in an older vehicle.

At the time I was spending well over $1500 a year on maintenance on a 20-year-old car. At the time I could buy a new car for less than $10,000. I figured that for what I would save on maintenance I could probably afford a new car and that the new car would pay for itself just in maintenance savings within 10 years. My older car was also getting unreliable, so I could've lost my job or possibly been injured. So I considered investing in the new car as job security and for my health/safety. It was also getting quite time-consuming doing all the maintenance, so with a new car I had more time to concentrate on working on my job and chores.

Eventually it should occur to you that your old vehicle is a money pit. I used to joke that you'd often could tell how bad a car is by how loud the radio is; instead of fixing the problems that are warning you of impending doom, such as timing chain slap, water pump noise, rod knock (other bearing noise), valve train noise, exhaust leaks, ect…; you simply buy a killer stereo and speakers and turn up the volume till the car dies. However then when your car dies, you have a $500 radio in a $50 car. In my case I had $400 worth of tires and a killer radio on a $50 car. The car was becoming a money pit and less reliable. I used to joke a lot of people get paranoid when cops follow them, I used to get paranoid when tow trucks would start following me.

Eventually the costs of maintaining the F-15s will exceed the replacement cost. There are also some things that are more important than a slight cost savings, other countries are apparently developing a counterpart to the F-22. So it would probably be to our benefit to increase production of the F-22 and start phasing out the F-15s, since the F-22 is more capable.

From what I understand the tooling for the F-22 is slated to be destroyed in a few years. I would like to see a decent amount of F-22's in-service and spare parts in storage before the tools are destroyed. If the production numbers are held low, I hope that the tooling destroy date contract can be renegotiated and extended for a few years, so we can negotiate more fighters over a longer period of time.

I'm afraid our country might be coming into hard times in the near future, it may be a while before we can afford to develop and manufacture a new fighter.

F-16.net Editor Joined: Sep 23, 2003 Posts: 2848

Combine this lastest loss of F-15 capability... not all grounded F-15s will be in service again, JSF not being available any time soon, and check all of the F-16 fleet numbers.

With retirements of F-16s, we will be dipping down into less than 1100 F-16s in service by 2012. With all those Block 25/30/32 jets it gets worse. We are going to run low on F-16s and with USAF having cut annual F-35 production slots, USAF is going to be small on fighters in the middle of the next decade. Not good.

F-22 won't be able to cover all the fighter shortages.

In order to stay healthy (least someone forget we are at war (I'm looking at you congress), we need some fighters.

Keep F-22 in production
Increase F-35 annual production slots for F-35 ( double the slots )
Stop-gap and start putting some new build F-16s in service. Block 50/52

We need all of those things in order to sustain Iraq, Afghanistan, Home Defense AND keep health for future big wars.

One has to look at the health of ALL of our fighter inventory, or, just stick their head in the sand and pretend the bad dream that is this train wreck will all go away.

With that in mind Elp, the following should also remind Congress and the like of the incredible operational tempo the USAF has sustained for 20 or more years...The following is actually scary. They are extracts from an afa report and speech, made two days ago by Gen. Moseley.

It's January ... so here are some revealing data on the "State of the Air Force."

Fighter Aircraft - average age: 20 years; average flight hours 5400+

Bomber Aircraft - average age: 32 years; average flight hours 11,400+

Tanker aircraft - average age: 44 years; average flight hours 18,900+

C2 Fleet - average age: 22 years old; average flight hours 32,000

ISR Fleet (excluding UAV) - average age: 30 years old; average flight hours 18,000

Key Groundings/Restrictions

F-15A-D - 163 of 441 are grounded for structural issues

B-52 - 6 are grounded - past due PDM grounding date - authorized a one-time flight to the bone-yard.

EC-130 - 2 of 14 are grounded due to center wing box cracks

C-130E - 3 are grounded and 13 are restricted due to Service life and wing cracks

KC-135Es - 26 of 86 are grounded due to engine strut corrosion.

AC-130U - 4 of 17 are restricted due to lack of 30MM weapons

B-2 - entire fleet is restricted due to windshield bolt hole cracks

C-5s - 39 of 108 are restricted due to crown skin restrictions (weight limiting)

Additionally:

219 of 223 F-15Es have training restrictions due to vertical stab structural issues

Majority of Block 25/30/32, block 40/42, and block 50/52 F-16s need structural modifications

All 356 A-10s will need new wings and new aircraft skin - many have landing gear issues ... and all need new engines.

C-130Hs have Center Wing Box issues

C-32As have bulkhead structural issues.

Looking across the FYDP - between 2008-2013 - the Air Force will divest itself of 749 aircraft and procure only 698 aircraft (260 of which are UAVs).

To give you the idea of the scale of all of this:

When the AF grounded its 600+ F-15 fleet, it grounded more aircraft than the entire F/A Navy. The F-15s it presently has grounded equate to a bit more than 3 aircraft carriers of aircraft.

The 356 A-10s that need renovations equates to more aircraft than the fixed wing USMC

The Air Force has about 5800 aircraft ... and presently about one-third are either grounded or restricted in one way or another
The central important part of this data is that this is not a third-world Air Force ... And the question we should ask ourselves, why don't we fund it to ensure our children and grandchildren are safe and secure?

(Courtesy of Glyn. Cheers mate).

The way I see it is as follows: the Raptors are replacing the Eagles so why keep on repairing something that is going to be replaced? The Raptor is faster, flies higher, further, longer, and better then anything out there. Why doesn't everybody see what a great buck for their buck the Raptor is? Granted the Eagle is a proven war bird but with the Raptor it won't need to prove itself because the enemy pisses their pants just thinking about it.

Newbie Joined: Jan 18, 2008 Posts: 8 Status: Offline

Quote:

In a Jan. 14 letter to Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., England said the Defense Department intends to keep the Lockheed Martin production line running via a 2009 supplemental funding request for more planes to replace war-related losses.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/ ... rs_080117/

The question still remains on how many more F-22s will come out if this.

I can't believe the government is still thinking about actually fixing a plane that entered service when my dad was still in high school (my dad is an old man I might add Cool

). There is no consistency here; we've already spent I don't know how many millions in R & D, IOC on the Raptor, proved it's the king of the skies, and now they want to FIX the Eagle?! WTF

I know multimillion dollar planes are supposed to last for at least 20 yrs service time, but the Eagle's been with us since the late 70's. You don't have to be an engineering major like me to do the math. The planes aren't safe to fly, and given this it's probable they won't be safe in combat either.

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How about f-22 for america air defence