Forum: Air Power

I know, I hear you but CLSS and their crash damage (serious repairs and complete rebuilds) are worth their weight in Gold...minor stuff, might be cheaper here and there to farm out but major repairs, rebuilds as CLSS has historically completed...CLSS is the Gold Ring for such ventures.

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akruse21 wrote:

I'm not going to find definite sources but it has to be cheaper rather than pay lifetime healthcare, housing, food, MWR, and so on.

Lots of contractors have an adversion to having mortar fire land anywhere near them, MOP gear and a lot of other things. Unless Blackwater gets into the business of outsourced combat maintainers. Laughing

. Thats OK though, we buried A-10s in the Desert once we can bury more of them that have just some fixable damage to them.

It's a pennywise and pound foolish move.

CLSS is indeed a talented group, and there is much more to the story. They use a lot of specialized tools, jigs, etc., that cannot be duplicated or rebuilt (cheaply, anyway). These fixtures are going to disappear (DRMO) and be scrapped out, and then a few years from now when somebody figures out what a mistake they made, they will have to be rebuilt. CLSS has more than paid for itself over the years in the cost of repaired aircraft.

Best Regards,

akruse21 wrote:

but it has to be cheaper rather than pay lifetime healthcare, housing, food, MWR, and so on.

This "but it has to be cheaper" seems to be the same logic applied at the levels these things are decided. While I was at Eglin all of our backshop/phase functions were taken over by a certain contractor. They stacked their day shift with numerous people, had only a few on swings, and a skelaton crew for mids. I can't count the number of times we did not have backshop support for maintenance because they did not have the people on shift. We tried to get them to adjust that, but hey, the contract says "x" number of people on each shift so that's what we got.
Then came weekend duty; there were too many times (read: almost always) when we would come in for weekend duty to take care of things, but had no backshop support because nobody could figure out who was going to pay the contractors overtime. And if that weekend fell over any kind of holiday, you could forget getting the contractor support.
We also had to deal with interruptions, because the workers had to go out for their hour lunch, and around the 7 hour, 15 minute mark we lost them again so they could have all their tools turned in, and turnover complete, before they clocked out. Then wait another half hour after the next shift clocked in so they could get their tools, get notes from the turnover, and get the new work priorities from the new shift supervisor.
Finally, you couldn't have convinced any of us that this contractor was doing its best to save the AF money; one look at the brand new, four door, four wheel drive (with the off road package) F-150 and F-250 trucks they bought and drove around the flightline shot that idea full of holes. I wish I could count all the times we needed a four-wheel drive truck with an off-road package on it- that concrete ramp with its severe sunshine sure would bog down our two-wheel drive vehicles, it was just horrible.
Contractors may have their place, but the aircraft maintenance enviornment certainly isn't it.

If any body runs into Gen Mosley or the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force ( a maintainer guy ), walk right up to them and ask them and tell them your concerns. Of course in a nice professional way. Ask Gen Keyes or any other MAJCOM guys the same and their chief if you see them too. Next time I run into some of the big people I'm going to ask too. This issue is just so serious it blows my mind. I can't put a dollar value on what CLSS does. IMHO they have paid for themselves time an again by putting banged up aircraft back into shape. We really need to point money saving ideas somewhere else. Please.

Forum: Air Power

CLSS Squadrons Going Away