Congress Daily (sub­scrip­tion required) reports the following:

As the Air National Guard grap­ples with an impend­ing fighter jet short­fall that will threaten its abil­ity to pro­tect U.S. air­space, its sup­port­ers in Congress and the Pentagon want the Air Force to con­sider all pos­si­ble solu­tions — even buy­ing Navy F-18s to fill the gap.

Lawmakers and other National Guard boost­ers are becom­ing increas­ingly frus­trated with the Defense Department and the Air Force, charg­ing that offi­cials have no work­able plan to deal with the Guard’s aging fleet.

They argue that 80 per­cent of the Air Guard’s F-16s, which fly the major­ity of Air Sovereignty Alert mis­sions, will retire years before their replace­ments are ready, deplet­ing units of the air­craft they need to secure domes­tic airspace.

The work­horse F-15 fleet isn’t in much bet­ter shape, hav­ing been grounded for three months after one broke apart in November 2007 dur­ing a train­ing mis­sion over east­ern Missouri.

As a result, the Air Force, the ser­vice funded to sup­ply air­planes to the Air National Guard, is being told by Congress to explore every option, includ­ing buy­ing F/A-18s.
The arti­cle goes on to say:

Boeing said it hasn’t had any dis­cus­sions with the National Guard about the F-18s. But one defense offi­cial said it’s an area the Air Force should review.

“I think the tax­payer demands we look at this because it’s an effi­cient, highly capa­ble air­craft that can sus­tain our force struc­ture through this risky period,” the offi­cial said.

The Air Force is focus­ing its bud­gets on the F-35, which even­tu­ally will make its way to the Air Guard. But lead­ers insist they are open to other solu­tions, if necessary.

Of course the Air Guard has shared type/model/series with the Navy before in the form of A-1s, A-7s, and F-4s.

At the same time, if I’m a Guard pilot, fighter gap or no, I’m hop­ing the Air Force holds out for the JSF.

(Gouge: NC)

– Ward

A reader sent me the fol­low­ing pic­ture report­edly of Sukhoi’s first attempt at a stealth air­craft and the Russians’ lat­est chal­lenger to the F-22.

Looks like the PAK-FA is just ‘paper air­plane’ to me, but I’d love some reader input on this.

(Gouge: CF)

– Christian

Last week, Time Magazine reported that an Israeli airstrike in the Sudan involved “dozens of air­craft.” The raid knocked back a siz­able over­land arms ship­ment from Iran to the Gaza Strip, but –more impor­tantly– demon­strated just how far (lit­er­ally) the Israelis are will­ing to go to break stuff that makes them ner­vous.
Here’s an inter­est­ing bit of trivia. The dis­tance between Tel Aviv and Khartoum is roughly the same as Tel Aviv and Tehran, with most of Iran’s nuclear facil­i­ties located in the west­ern half of the coun­try. Though the IAF’s fleet has boasted KC-130H tankers for some time, whether or not Israel had the lungs for such a dis­tant strike was arguable. Now, the debate is over.
Sure the suc­cess­ful strike doesn’t sat­isfy the ques­tion of Iran’s robust IAD net­work (Sudan doesn’t have one), nor does it offer any insight into a safe ingress/egress route in and out of Iran. But, it does show the Israelis have the legs –and the stones– to pros­e­cute the fight over long dis­tances, and refuel their strike air­craft in close prox­im­ity to their Arab neigh­bors.
Aside: IAF tankers flew a refu­el­ing track over the Red Sea, smack in the mid­dle of Egyptian and Saudi air­space. The Egyptians fly F-16s that are a sim­i­lar, though infe­rior, vari­ant of the Israeli F-16i, and the Saudis fly AWACs guided F-15s.
I’ve heard rumors that the IAF was ready to knock back Nataz yes­ter­day, should they hear the trumpet’s blast. Even though these guys have proven time and time again that fail­ure isn’t in their vocab­u­lary, fac­tor­ing in dis­tance and enemy defenses left me skep­ti­cal. Now? Hey, I’m a believer.
And just for fun…

Are you a ham-fisted goon who lacks sit­u­a­tional aware­ness and is just happy to walk away from each hop with all the big pieces still on the jet? Well, if so, the Royal Australian Air Force wants you!

This from Epicos.com:

In a world first for an Air Force and an infra-red guided mis­sile, Air Combat Group (ACG) of the Royal Australian Air Force has suc­cess­fully car­ried out the first in-service ‘Lock After Launch’ fir­ing of an ASRAAM (Advanced short-range air-to-air mis­sile) at a tar­get located behind the wing-line of the “shooter” air­craft. The fir­ing was con­ducted from an F/A-18 fighter air­craft, at low level and typ­i­cal fighter speed, at a tar­get located behind the fighter at a range in excess of 5km. The result was a direct hit on the target.

The engage­ment sim­u­lated a “chase down” sit­u­a­tion by an enemy fighter and suc­cess­fully demon­strated the poten­tial for an all-round self pro­tec­tion capa­bil­ity with the ASRAAM. This capa­bil­ity is inher­ent on all plat­forms that pro­vide pre-launch ‘over the shoul­der’ des­ig­na­tion infor­ma­tion such as F/A-18, Eurofighter Typhoon and F-35 JSF.

So this set­tles it once and for all. We no longer care about Ps curves and air-to-air per­for­mance of the air­plane. I don’t want to debate who would win a 1-v-1 between a MiG-37 and a JSF. It just doesn’t matter.

Here’s a new bumper sticker idea (this year’s “My other car is an F-18″): “My ASRAAM mis­sile hides the fact that I’m a grape.”

(Gouge: NC)

– Ward

[From the front page of Military.com]

A pilot strug­gling to con­trol a crip­pled Marine Corps jet bypassed a chance to land at a coastal Navy base and instead flew toward an inland base, where min­utes later the fighter crashed into a San Diego neigh­bor­hood and killed four peo­ple, record­ings released Tuesday revealed. 

Meanwhile, mil­i­tary offi­cials say that four offi­cers at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar have been relieved of duty in con­nec­tion with the fatal crash and nine other mil­i­tary per­son­nel received lesser rep­ri­mands. Officials said the 13 were dis­ci­plined for a series of avoid­able mechan­i­cal and human errors that led to the crash, which killed four mem­bers of the same fam­ily, includ­ing two children. 

“It was col­lec­tively bad decision-making,” said Col. John Rupp, oper­a­tions offi­cer for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. 

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

Recordings of con­ver­sa­tions between fed­eral air con­trollers and the pilot of the F/A-18D Hornet show the pilot repeat­edly was offered a chance to land the plane at the Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado. The base sits at the tip of a penin­sula with a flight path over water. 

Instead, the Federal Aviation Administration tapes dis­close, the pilot decided to fly the jet, which had lost one engine and was show­ing signs of trou­ble with the sec­ond, to the inland Miramar base, which is about 10 miles north of Coronado. 

That route took him over the University City neigh­bor­hood, where the Dec. 8 crash incin­er­ated two homes and dam­aged three others. 

“This was a tragic inci­dent that could have been pre­vented,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who was among the law­mak­ers who received a closed-door brief­ing Tuesday on the results of the Marine Corps’ inves­ti­ga­tion into the crash, said in a statement. 

The pilot and senior offi­cers “did not con­sult their check­lists and fol­low appro­pri­ate pro­ce­dure,” Hunter said. Had those rules been fol­lowed, “the crash would not have occurred.”

(more…)

Okay, folks, something’s gotta give, money-wise. As we dicussed in a recent post and pod­cast, the VH-71 is in the crosshairs for severe reduc­tions if not out­right can­cel­la­tion. These are bad times to be a pro­gram 100 per­cent over bud­get and a cou­ple of years behind schedule.

Moreover, these are bad times PERIOD. Now I under­stand that the JSF and F-22 are designed to meet sep­a­rate Air Force require­ments. The JSF meets the LOW require­ment and replaces the F-16; the F-22 meets the HIGH require­ment and replaces the F-15. But the fis­cal situ­ta­tion now and in the FYDP might not sup­port both.

We had a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion back in the day when car­rier avi­a­tion, due to bud­get con­cerns pri­mar­ily, was forced to choose between the A-6 and the F-14. Long story short, the Intruder went away and the Navy enhanced the Tomcat’s res­i­dent bomb­ing capa­bil­ity. (The rest is OEF and OIF his­tory, of course.)

So with Christian on the road for the next few days and me mind­ing the store, I wanted to open up the dis­cus­sion to you guys, the awe­some and eru­dite in defense mat­ters DT read­ers. What do you think? If the USAF decison-makers are made to choose one or the other, which should they pick?

Wikipedia (the source of all mod­ern knowl­edge) “apples-to-apples” unit fly­away price com­par­i­son: F-22 - $137.5 mil­lion; JSF - $83 mil­lion. And I know the Raptor does things the JSF doesn’t, but does that capa­bil­ity val­i­date the addi­tional cost con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent (and pro­jected) threat and bud­getary situation?

The com­ments board is now open.

– Ward

[Ripped from the front page of Military.com]

AF Reaches Out to Flight-rated Officers

Faced with a short­fall of about 1,600 flight-rated offi­cers, the Air Force is reach­ing out to pilots, air bat­tle man­agers and nav­i­ga­tors who have left active duty, ser­vice offi­cials said Wednesday.

Under a pro­gram autho­rized for this cal­en­dar year, retirees and reservists — most from the Inactive Ready Reserve — can come back to active duty for up to four years, offi­cials said. The pro­gram is also open to cur­rent or for­mer mem­bers of all services.

“We are not solic­it­ing O-6s; we are pri­mar­ily expect­ing majors and lieu­tenant colonels to come back,” said Lt. Col. Dewey Duhadway, chief of rated force policy.

The Air Force has received inter­est from about 1,000 retirees and reservists about the pro­gram, Duhadway said on Wednesday.

Those inter­ested in return­ing to active duty would have go before an aero­nau­ti­cal review board to deter­mine their rat­ings qual­i­fi­ca­tions, and returnees from the IRR will have to undergo a phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion, he said.

I think we should all encour­age Ward to get back in the cock­pit! (that’s him, sec­ond from the left)…

Read the rest of the story HERE.

– Christian

The Blue Angels will fly the bal­ance of their 2008 sea­son with five jets instead of six because of pend­ing admin­is­tra­tive action against one of the team’s pilots. Marine Corps Capt. Tyson Dunkelberger, the Blue Angel’s spokesman, allowed that the pilot had been removed from fly­ing duties for an “inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ship” with a female mem­ber of the demon­stra­tion team. Dunkelberger would not, how­ever, iden­tify the rank or squadron bil­let of either party involved, cit­ing legal reasons.

The five-plane demon­stra­tion will employ a dia­mond for­ma­tion with­out the “slot” posi­tion, but Dunkelberger was quick to point out that the loss of Blue Angel No. 4 in the show did not nec­es­sar­ily mean that the pilot has flown in that posi­tion dur­ing this sea­son is involved in the inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ship. The mys­tery will be short-lived, how­ever, as the Blue’s are sched­uled to per­form a prac­tice show today in San Antonio minus the flyer in ques­tion and his absence will be obvi­ous to any­one in atten­dance hold­ing a show program.

The Blue Angels have dealt with other per­son­nel issues in recent years. In 2000 Blue Angel No. 2, a Marine Corps offi­cer, was removed from the team for hav­ing another “inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ship” with the team’s female pub­lic affairs offi­cer. And last year, Lcdr. Kevin Davis, Blue Angel No. 6, flew his F/A-18 into the ground and was killed dur­ing a show near Beaufort, South Carolina. In each of these cases a pilot who had been on the team the year prior was pulled out of a fleet squadron and returned to the Blue Angels so that the team could fly the bal­ance of the sea­son with a full six-jet com­ple­ment. Dunkelberger stated that there weren’t enough shows left to jus­tify that sort of effort in the cur­rent case. After the San Antonio shows this week­end, the Blue Angels will per­form at the Kennedy Space Center and then close their sea­son with two shows at their home base in Pensacola, Florida.

Updated Nov. 1: This from a dis­cus­sion thread at the Blue Angel’s home­town paper, The Pensacola News Journal:

“cal­fan wrote: It was two officers…#4 Maj. Clint Harris and Lt. Gretchen Doan. They are both officers…they both know bet­ter. Clint flew back Sunday in his jet, minus the #4. Didn’t fly in the air­show or prac­tice. He’s mar­ried with kids. She’s not. Bottom line is these are two adults who made a huge mistake/decision, broke a major rule, ruined their careers, humil­i­ated their fam­i­lies, got kicked off the team…they will have this hang­ing over their heads and fol­low­ing them around for­ever. Boss did the right thing…”

The alle­ga­tions in this post are uncon­firmed but the tenor of it makes me think this per­son knows what he or she is talk­ing about, includ­ing the use of the term “Boss” to refer to the Blue Angel’s com­mand­ing offi­cer. And if the IDs are cor­rect, then in fact (and in spite of Capt. Dunkelberger’s insis­tence to the con­trary) it was the slot pilot who’s been removed, which makes things much eas­ier in terms of work­ing the five-plane show in that all the remain­ing pilots are fly­ing in the same posi­tions they’ve flown all year.

And mak­ing Maj. Harris fly back from his final show with­out the num­ber on his jet his some­thing right out of King Arthur’s Court or a Hollywood scriptwriter’s fan­tasy. (Remember the open­ing of the TV series “Branded” back in the day?) Who said the spirit of Naval Aviation is dead?

– Ward

It could just be that the Air Force is enter­ing an era that, in part, will be defined by what will not be a hot-button issue: uniforms.

“First things first,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz responded Sept. 17 when asked by Military.com whether uni­forms — new ones or mod­i­fi­ca­tions to cur­rent dress — will be rel­e­gated to the back burner dur­ing his tenure.

Schwartz, who had just lis­tened as his major com­mand chiefs offered up a list of things the Air Force needs today-right-now-thank-you-very much — includ­ing new tankers, more man­power, new tankers, upgrades and main­te­nance to mobil­ity and fighter planes and, oh yeah, new tankers — said the Air Force has any num­ber of crit­i­cal pro­grams it must tackle.

Maybe, at some point down the road, when these other things have been taken care of, he said, uni­forms may again be on the agenda.

For now, Schwartz does have to deal with pro­posed uni­form changes that he inher­ited, includ­ing the adop­tion of a new ser­vice dress uni­form mod­eled after one worn by leg­endary air­man Hap Arnold.

The Air Force has a long record of chang­ing or tweak­ing its uni­forms. Acting Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley made a humor­ous ref­er­ence to this fact on Monday, the open­ing day of the Air Force Association’s Air and Space Symposium in Washington, D.C. The Air Force dress uni­form only recently under­went a change, with the addi­tion of a belt to the jacket, and Donley noted that the last time he worked for the Air Force, as an assis­tant sec­re­tary and then act­ing sec­re­tary in 1993, the uni­form went through major changes under then Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak.

He said he would answer ques­tions today about uni­forms the same way he answered them back then: “Ask the chief.”

Schwartz last month decided to defer until some­time next year a deci­sion on a Hap Arnold-esque ser­vice coat. The pro­posed jacket came out of a 2006 uni­form board under Schwartz’s pre­de­ces­sor, Gen. T. Michael Moseley.

Some uni­form changes have been greeted crit­i­cally by air­men — includ­ing a pro­posed blue cam­mie BDU sev­eral years ago — who argue that the Air Force has more impor­tant issues fac­ing it than whether it should have a belt on a ser­vice dress jacket or whether BDUs should come with a per­ma­nent crease.

The pro­posed new dress jacket will cost about $125 mil­lion to man­u­fac­ture if it’s approved, the Air Force estimated.

– Bryant Jordan

I’m always reluc­tant to post these sto­ries and I always get a lot of flak from them, but I think it’s impor­tant for folks who might not have access to them that are involved in some way with avi­a­tion to see what hap­pened and get some “lessons learned” data that can maybe help them down the road. 

A Harrier crash on Feb. 13 near Cherry Point (the sec­ond in a series of four so far this fis­cal year) was ini­tially thought to have been caused by engine fail­ure. But accord­ing to the Judge Advocate General Manual inves­ti­ga­tion I got my hand on through FOIA the cause was a far sim­pler — and more cor­rectable one.

According to an offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion report released after a Freedom of Information Act Request from Military.com, the pilot, Capt. Ian Stevens, failed to move the jet noz­zles of his Harrier to the posi­tion required for con­ven­tional flight dur­ing a Feb. 13 mis­sion to prac­tice aer­ial refu­el­ing and ground attack runs near Cherry Point Marine Air Station, caus­ing the plane to drop from the sky.

That’s from a story we’re post­ing today on Military.com (there’ve been some tech­ni­cal snags so pub­lish­ing is delayed). Here’s a bit more:

“This mishap was caused by the mishap pilot not posi­tion­ing the noz­zles back to the aft posi­tion after posi­tion­ing them … to the hov­er­stop posi­tion in order to … sta­bi­lize in a proper for­ma­tion posi­tion with is lead,” the inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer stated in the report. “The thrust remained vec­tored below the air­craft until the air­craft impacted the ground.” …

Stevens exe­cuted sev­eral suc­cess­ful aer­ial refu­el­ing runs on a KC-10 Extender tanker, the report said, before peel­ing away with the other two Harriers to prac­tice using his tar­get­ing pod dur­ing mock ground attacks. As he was try­ing to slow down and join up with the lead pilot of the flight, whose name is redacted from the report, things started to go wrong.

“The engine sounded like it was spool­ing up … but the lead [pilot] con­tin­ued to pull away from me,” Stevens — whose name was removed from the report but released to local media at the time of the crash — told inves­ti­ga­tors in a state­ment. “I … increased power to ‘mil’ but did not feel a cor­re­spond­ing accel­er­a­tion. I decided that I had a problem.”

(more…)