This Is Not Good
CNN reports Air Force grounds F-15s in Afghanistan after Missouri crash
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A mandatory grounding of Air Force F-15s has been expanded to cover those flying combat missions over Afghanistan after a crash in Missouri last week, Air Force officials said Monday.
The F-15Es in Afghanistan can fly only in emergency situations to protect U.S. and coalition troops in a battle, according to Maj. John Elolf, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force Central Command.
Maj. Cristin Marposon, an Air Force spokeswoman, told The Associated Press the country’s fleet of 676 F-15s, including mission critical jets, was grounded on November 3 for “airworthiness concerns” after the crash of an older model F-15C on Friday.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation, but Air Force officials said it was a structural failure and the plane broke apart in flight.
If they are grounding the F-15Es it means this was a main structure failure, possibly a wing spar and they suspect a fatigue problem, which is why they would ground the newer aircraft as they are subject to greater stresses. There are too many things going wrong, making me believe that routine maintenance is not being done.
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Grounding the newer planes is troublesome. As you say the only reason would have to be a fundamental airframe issue. It will be interesting to see what the say is the reason but I suspect you are on the right track with maintenance and inspections. As the failure to recruit enough new airmen they are probably getting stretched for experienced mechanics and techs to keep the fleet in top shape. The first thing to go south when the armed forces are under pressure for personnel is the high tech stuff. They keep lowering recruiting standards and you just can’t take some of these “less than perfect” recruits and turn them into skilled techs no matter how much you yell at them.
The failures on the nuclear weapons handling, the faking of maintenance logs on a nuclear submarine, and an apparent failure to inspect for fatigue on aircraft is a systemic problem. These things were inconceivable in the military I knew. The maintenance people just did their jobs even though there was a bit of a bother in Southeast Asia and the Soviets were aiming hundreds of nukes at us.
This is truly scary, because it undercuts the confidence in the systems that really form the backbone of defense.
Thing is, even most of the newer F-15’s are over 15 years old, and they’re being used *hard*. It was never expected that, five years after entering a war calling for heavy use of air power, we would still be using the same jet fighters that were being used at the start of the war. In every previous war a new generation of fighters came online within a few years of the start of the war and was produced in large numbers so that they didn’t have to be worked like sled dogs. Jet fighters simply aren’t built for that kind of continuous use. They’re not like airliners or B-52’s, which were designed for round-the-clock long distance operations. They’re the Ferraris or Ducati’s of jet planes, high-strung high-powered little buggers that are intended for performance under racetrack conditions and which require meticulous maintenance and generally don’t last a long time, a Ducati which has 30,000 miles on it is a rarity, most are crashed or scrapped long before then because as racebikes they’re used *hard*.
Airframe fatigue is not a maintenance problem. If it was an engine problem, that’d be a maintenance problem. Airframe fatigue is a sign of overuse. Estimating airframe life is an art, not a science. Now, an airframe *crashing* due to airframe fatigue may be a maintenance issue — from time to time a fighter is supposed to be withdrawn from duty and stripped down and its airframe completely analyzed to see what its stress levels look like and what its projected remaining airframe life is likely to be. But even that’s not 100% accurate, especially for a small-production heavily-stressed jet like an F-15, where there are only 335 of the “new” ones in service and many of them are approaching 20 years old.
In short, this is yet another case of the Busheviks going to war on the cheap. The moment the decision to go to war was made, the production lines should have been cranked up for whatever jet fighters were necessary to fight the wars that Rumsfeld wanted to fight. Instead, we’re using the same tired fighters that were already aging before the start of the war… with predictable results. (At least the Navy has their new Superbugs, but the Navy ain’t fightin’ in Afghanistan — sorta a lack of ocean there :-0).
There are a series of tests run on the main spars to checking for any signs of fracturing. There are removable panels that make it possible without totally stripping them, and they give access to the main wiring harnesses which are inspected more frequently that the structure.
The 33rd Fighter Wing, which is local, spends most if its time back here checking the aircraft that were deployed, because they don’t have the equipment in-country to do all of the testing or maintenance.
Occasionally one of their birds will come back in shipping containers because it can’t be repaired in theater.
The F-22 sure isn’t ready for prime time, hell, half the vehicles and equipment over there isn’t worth shipping home it’s so beat up by the sand.
F-16s are still being built, and we should be buying them to replace what’s getting used up, because there is no fighter challenge, and ground attack is the mission.
When we are finally out, they will shed pilots, just like they did after the first Gulf War, because there won’t be any planes left for them to fly.
Even with a full teardown it’s hard to catch everything that might be a problem in the future. In the end it all boils down to statistics. Once an airframe reaches a Certain Age(tm), even the most meticulous of inspections may not suffice to keep it safe, which is why all the old Boeing 737’s built in the 70’s are now bopping around Africa rather than flying Southworst. I have a sneaking suspicion that, due to the hard use they’ve gotten during Dear Leader’s little wars, our F-15’s have reached sufficient hours on their airframes where they’re gonna start dropping out of the sky no matter how much maintenance you do to them…
The F-16 in my opinion is the best fighter in the world. Oh sure, it doesn’t have the best specs on anything. But it’s a helluva dogfighter, it’s cheap, it’s low maintenance, (half the engines of an F-15 means half the maintenance costs there!), it hauls plenty of ordinance, if it were a motorcycle it’d be a Japanese sportbike rather than a Ducati. Performance-wise the Japanese sportbike will do pretty much everything the Ducati will do, while costing half as much and requiring half the maintenance and being significantly more reliable. There really is no compelling reason to keep the F-15 in our fleet, other than as welfare for Boeing — it costs over $3m *apiece* per year in maintenance costs to keep each F-15 in the air. Lockheed can turn out F-16’s for under $20M in quantity. Huh.