#1 U.S. Air Force Aircraft Wearing Down
Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 10:25 am
Link
The article only discusses the U2 and the A-10, but they're not the only aging aircraft in our fleet. The 130s of every make and model are nearly archiac. I work on some that are older then I am. The average age of the planes I work on is 20+ years with our newwest one being manufactured in 87 or 88.
Bolkcom speaks like a true asshole who's never had to maintain an aircraft in his life.
We've got parts on these planes that have been repaired so many times we've lost count. We've also got parts that are so worn down and degraded we have to send them off to Depot to service, which effectively takes them out of the supply system for a year or more. The wiring and systems in most AF planes have been repaired, spliced, replaced, crimped, tapped or fucked with so many times that most of them don't even bear a passing resemblance to the original wiring diagrams.
The planes are so bad that half the time they don't even recognize good parts as good. I can pull a part off the aircraft that's checking bad. I can take it into the backshop, run it up on a test bench, align it, tweak it, set the defaults and turn it back out servicable. Put it back on the plane and the plane says it's bad. I can order two more of the same part, both check servicable on test benches, but one will work and the other wont. It's not because the parts are bad, or the techs fucked something up, it's because our planes are so fucked up that they can't function half the time.
Reports say we're spending 87% more on maintenance. I believe it. The scary part is every time I pull a part off a plane and fix it instead of having the AF buy a new one, I save the AF millions in some cases. The cheapest part I work on is over $100,000USD. The most expensive is valued brand new at over $17,000,000USD. It costs the AF about $100,000 to fix the $17million item. That's a huge cost savings. And we're spending 87% more. Imagine the costs when it gets to the point where we can no longer fix the things.
The average operational time for a brand new part is measured in months before it will suffer a fail or problem of some sort requiring us to break it down and replace or fix parts inside of it. Looking at a history of some of our parts, the life expectancy has dropped, not to weeks, but to days or in some very bad cases, even hours. Some of them are so bad that you might get one or two good flights with it before having to replace it.
We desperately need new equipment, new LRUs and SRUs, new planes, new everything. And we're not getting them. Given another decade of waiting around to fix this issue is going to have catastrophic results. I'm not saying planes are suddenly going to drop from the sky because wings fell off(which, sadly, is a real possibility with some of them), but it'll get to the point where half the fleet is grounded at a time because we don't have enough parts to fix them.
This probably doesn't interest many other people besides me, but I posted it anyway.Air Force Fleet Wearing Down
USA Today | May 08, 2007
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.
Arcing wires near fuel tanks recently forced the Air Force to ground its fleet of 33 U-2 spy planes in March for at least a day, Keys said.
The average Air Force warplane is 23.5 years old compared with 8.5 years in 1967. In 2001, the average plane was 22 years old.
The Air Force says it wants to buy new planes to lower the average age of its fleet to 15 years over the next two decades. That will cost an estimated $400billion.
There are 356 A-10s in service. The plane is often used to support ground forces in close combat. The A-10 carries missiles and bombs, but its cannon is particularly effective in strafing.
The Air Force recently bought replacement wings for 132 of its workhorse A-10s at $7 million per plane. The Air Force wants another $34 million for more replacement wings this year.
In the past week, A-10s have attacked enemy forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The planes shot at and bombed Taliban rebels in Afghanistan; in Iraq, A-10s performed a variety of reconnaissance missions to find and stop insurgents from burying roadside bombs.
Aircraft age is misleading, said Christopher Bolkcom, a national security analyst at the Congressional Research Service. Some aircraft may have been lightly used for years and have safe flying hours left. Maintaining old planes may be expensive but often cheaper than buying a new aircraft, he said.
"Chronological age is only one measure of aircraft health," Bolkcom said. "Age is not a safety issue."
While refurbished planes often fly as well as new ones, they may also require more crewmembers to fly and maintain them, said James Jay Carafano, a military analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "These life-cycle costs really matter," he said.
The article only discusses the U2 and the A-10, but they're not the only aging aircraft in our fleet. The 130s of every make and model are nearly archiac. I work on some that are older then I am. The average age of the planes I work on is 20+ years with our newwest one being manufactured in 87 or 88.
Bolkcom speaks like a true asshole who's never had to maintain an aircraft in his life.
We've got parts on these planes that have been repaired so many times we've lost count. We've also got parts that are so worn down and degraded we have to send them off to Depot to service, which effectively takes them out of the supply system for a year or more. The wiring and systems in most AF planes have been repaired, spliced, replaced, crimped, tapped or fucked with so many times that most of them don't even bear a passing resemblance to the original wiring diagrams.
The planes are so bad that half the time they don't even recognize good parts as good. I can pull a part off the aircraft that's checking bad. I can take it into the backshop, run it up on a test bench, align it, tweak it, set the defaults and turn it back out servicable. Put it back on the plane and the plane says it's bad. I can order two more of the same part, both check servicable on test benches, but one will work and the other wont. It's not because the parts are bad, or the techs fucked something up, it's because our planes are so fucked up that they can't function half the time.
Reports say we're spending 87% more on maintenance. I believe it. The scary part is every time I pull a part off a plane and fix it instead of having the AF buy a new one, I save the AF millions in some cases. The cheapest part I work on is over $100,000USD. The most expensive is valued brand new at over $17,000,000USD. It costs the AF about $100,000 to fix the $17million item. That's a huge cost savings. And we're spending 87% more. Imagine the costs when it gets to the point where we can no longer fix the things.
The average operational time for a brand new part is measured in months before it will suffer a fail or problem of some sort requiring us to break it down and replace or fix parts inside of it. Looking at a history of some of our parts, the life expectancy has dropped, not to weeks, but to days or in some very bad cases, even hours. Some of them are so bad that you might get one or two good flights with it before having to replace it.
We desperately need new equipment, new LRUs and SRUs, new planes, new everything. And we're not getting them. Given another decade of waiting around to fix this issue is going to have catastrophic results. I'm not saying planes are suddenly going to drop from the sky because wings fell off(which, sadly, is a real possibility with some of them), but it'll get to the point where half the fleet is grounded at a time because we don't have enough parts to fix them.