I found and interesting yet scary article tonight. It's talking about the purchasing of fighters for the US military. Some of the numbers they
throw out there are VERY scary. For example, in 1986 fighter procurement fell from a high of 399 to 60 in 1993. The US Navy purchased 171 fighters
in 1986. That fell to 36 in 1993, then climbed to current levels of 40-50 a year.
By contrast, the US Air Force in 1986 bought 228, by 1993 that had crashed to 24, and fell to 0 in 1995. In 2003 it climbed back up to 21, all 21
being F-22s. The average age of those fighters has gone from 11 to over 20.
In 10 years the cost of operating the F-15 has doubled. It's estimated that the cost to repair the $12,000 longeron was $250,000 in labor. It
required peeling the skin back, and removing ribs to get access to the longerons, and then putting them back together. The average age of the 441
F-15s that were grounded is 25.5. It's expected that they will be operating 177 F-15s until 2025 at which time they will be 40-45.
In the late 1990s the F-16s suffered several crashes due to engine related problems. There are 63 that have been grounded due to structural cracking.
The average age of the F-16 fleet is 16.7 years.
The F/A-18 by contrast is a relatively "young" 13.6.
The B-52 fleet is 46.6 and the KC-135 is 46-48 depending on the model of tanker.
The gleaming icon of American military supremacy is the jet fighter, streamlined and lethal as it shrieks through the sky. On November 2, 2007,
one of those fighters broke into pieces in the air. The pilot ejected safely, but the Air Force grounded an entire class of aircraft -- 441 A/B and
C/D models of the F-15 Eagle air superiority fighter -- for most of two months. Training flights were canceled, homeland-security patrols were
transferred to other aircraft, and pilots were stuck on the ground in simulators while maintenance crews conducted a series of frenzied inspections.
"There were daily conference calls with the accident investigation board," said Maj. Joe Harris, commander of the Air National Guard's 142nd
Aircraft Maintenance Squadron in Portland, Ore. "We were released to fly, and then they grounded us again." Getting their base's 20 F-15s back in
the air took Harris's mechanics "over 5,000 hours" of work, he said -- 250 hours per plane.
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nationaljournal.com...
[edit on 14-3-2008 by NGC2736]
[edit on 3/14/2008 by Zaphod58]
