F-15's Still Grounded

The workhorse of protecting America's air space remains grounded. Popular Mechanics has an update on the situation and tosses this into the picture near the end of the article:

The 2008 defense bill passed last week by Congress designates $3.15 billion to purchase an additional 20 F-22 Raptor jets, , a successor to the F-15, from Lockheed Martin. Over the next several years, the Air Force wants to maintain or even step up spending on both Raptors and the F-35 Lightning II (aka the Joint Strike Fighter). But some in Congress have been pushing to limit Air Force spending in order to beef up ground forces. According to the online rumor mill, the well-publicized shutdown of F-15s is meant to provide the Air Force with some leverage when the bean counters come knocking.

I - for one - don't buy into this being a intra-service maneuver to gain the upper hand in any budget situation. I see this as an offshoot of having fighter jets in service that should have been rotated out for newer models years ago. The F-15's in service today (as I understand it) range in vintage from 1975 models to 2004 models. Those older models are the equivalent of asking the state police to make due on the highway with 1975 Fury III's.

My issue with the reporting of this situation has to do with what is omitted. If it was a car crash and not a plane crash being dealt with we would immediately be told the make, model and YEAR of the car involved. In all reported crashes and in particular in the November 2nd crash we are only told that the model was an F-15C which narrows it down. The F-15C came into the Air Force's inventory starting in 1979.

Now we hear from the Air Force that the newer F-15E's are about to be returned to service and that:

Although the F-15E models are newer, they only represent about one third of the Air Force's F-15s. The older majority of the F-15s are of more concern for Air Force officials.

"What we've got here is an example, in the C model, of what happens when you have an airplane that's about 25 years old," said Maj. Gen. David Gillett, ACC director of logistics.

The Nov. 2 crash also demonstrates the importance of recapitalizing the Air Force's fighter fleet, said the general. ACC's current fleet is the oldest in Air Force history. New systems are more capable, cost less to operate, require fewer people to maintain and can survive modern threat environments, ACC officials have said.

I've said it before - anyone who has ever owned an older car knows that at some point it is more cost effective to get a new(er) car than to keep putting money into repairs on the old one. It is a scandal that our airspace security and the lives of the airmen flying these planes has been put at risk the way it has been.

HT to Instapundit for the PM article

F-15's Grounded

The entire fleet of F-15 fighter jets has been grounded as a precautionary measure.

If you read the article it states that the F-15 is scheduled to be replaced by the F-22 but that's incorrect. Most of the current F-15's will be replaced by the more cost effective F-35 (is it too much to ask for the LA Times to get that detail right?).

The state of our Air Force really is almost at crisis stages. The F-15's (which make up the bulk of our fighters) are on average about 24-years old per plane. The tankers which are used to refuel the planes in flight are almost literally relics from the Eisenhower administration. The helicopters used to find and rescue downed pilots are also about ready for mandatory retirement. This is an end to end crisis that puts the very security of the nation in peril.

I offer two analogies that I think fit the current situation.

First our current Air Force capability is like a big city police force that has a limited elite SWAT team made up of the best professionals that training and money can provide but every other policeman on the force is a months from retirement beat cop who probably would have a heart attack if forced to run down a criminal in a foot race. Sure the SWAT team is great to have (and necessary) but they are really only good after the fact and in limited deployment. Just like the Air Force and the stealth fighters and bombers.

Second analogy. Most people with an older family vehicle get to a point where the expense of repairing and maintaining a car make the purchase of a new car not just feasible but the fiscally responsible thing to do. Imagine that you reached that point but were told that you had to instead keep paying for new transmissions and power trains instead of just buying that new car. Imagine that the reason you had to keep the older car was because someone somewhere decided you had to keep the local mechanic in business. That's the situation the Air Force finds themselves in today.

It should be an outrage.

I can't help but think that besides deaths by roadside IED's - whenever I read about a number of military personnel dying it is usually in an air crash during a training exercise. You almost never read about the age or vintage of the craft they were flying in but that piece of information should be mandatory in every report. There needs to be outrage to get Congress to do the right thing. That's the sad state of affairs things have sunk to.