The US Grounds 1/3 of Airforce

So, one third of our air force is on the ground? OK, That makes it an almost fair fight for anybody that wants to take a shot at us! Seriously, they grounded the thunderbirds, the blue angels, and the golden nights. Fair enough. I image about 1/3 of your operational fleet, being grounded is about average, I mean, we are at war so 1/3 in combat, 1/3 in transit, 1/3 on reserve, sounds fair enough. How much flying are the Taliban doing these days? The Iranians? The North Koreans? excluding Russia, how many countries have the range and persistence to conduct and air-superiority mission over the continental US? Guam? How many countries have air breathing platforms that they can use to conduct DIRECT strikes against the US? Maybe our pilots and ground cres coud use a little break. They would die for us, maybe we should give them a break. I mean, when the US Army is classifying some of our troops as 'exrtremists' because they are Evangelicals, or Catholics, I think having a few planes on the ground is he least of our worries!

Originally posted by xenongod
They grounded planes before 9/11 if I recall correctly.

no, you recall wrongly.

Once our forces are weakened and spread out to thin, becomes an opportune time to invade.

Just who and how could anyone invade the USA?

drones are cheap
and they are small...
here
take two


oh yeah
it costs lots to train pilots
drone jockies...not so much

Originally posted by hellobruce

Originally posted by xenongod
They grounded planes before 9/11 if I recall correctly.

no, you recall wrongly.

Once our forces are weakened and spread out to thin, becomes an opportune time to invade.

Just who and how could anyone invade the USA?

35 Million Illegal Mexicans are laffing it up at your expense as we speak

reply to post by WhiteAlice


Except that there are also a lot of planes being grounded that DON'T have problems.

As for the ones cited in your reply:

The A-10 is undergoing a major upgrade, starting in 2010, which included replacing the entire wing, center wing box, and avionics upgrades. The A-10 has always been one that the Air Force wanted to scrap, but there are still a number of squadrons in service, and will be for several years to come.

The F-22 problems have a fix in place, and the aircraft are being modified. The F-22 is the most advanced fighter in the world, and the grounding of them to keep flying hours available is insanity.

The F-16 estimate was correct. The Air Force doesn't plan on upgrading all of the fleet, or even most of it. They're going to keep the minimum available flying, as they're getting older, and some of them have developed cracks in the fuselage, at key points that would be costly to fix.

The B-1 talk crops up every few years. The B-1 has had problems through its life, especially in the early years. Those problems have since been corrected, but the Air Force looks at the history of the aircraft, and sees a troubled program to get rid of. However, the B-1 isn't going anywhere, as that would only leave the B-52, which can't penetrate modern defenses, and is only capable of launching cruise missiles, and 20 B-2s. That means that we would only have 20 strategic bombers capable of hitting targets in modern defenses. The B-1 is safe.

But besides those, they are grounding at least 1 B-52 squadron, 4 F-15E (our only true tactical bomber) squadrons, 2 F-15C/D squadrons, 3 E-3 squadrons will be basic mission capable, 1 RC-135 squadron, 1 TC-135 squadron.

A complete list is here.

reply to post by CarbonBase


No, being on the ground, and being grounded are VASTLY different. When they are on the ground, pilots are still qualified to fly them, and qualified to fly them in combat. When they're grounded, pilots lose their qualifications, and require up to 3 months of training to get them back, and to become combat qualified again. Having 1/3rd on the ground means that the pilots can still fly the others assigned to their squadrons. This time entire squadrons are grounded, which means that they can't fly other aircraft to keep qualified. They're flying a desk.

reply to post by Zaphod58
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Thanks for that clarification. Do you know approx. how long pilot off of flight status has before a re-qual is required? If that's sensitive I understand. The Air Force is pretty organized, I think they'll be able to find they're guys some stick time somewhere in any case, 1/3 of our guys is still enough to impress ANYBODY who takes them to task, and of course, we do have our peerless NAVY and Marine Corps aviators too. A pity the Phantom is gone, that could have made it a little easier.

reply to post by CarbonBase


It takes three to four months to completely lose currency, and up to 6 months after that to regain it.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Thanks, was going off of what was listed in the Star Tribune and hadn't seen that the F-22 issue had been rectified. Still, they were discussing replacing those listed there with the F-35 and those are being, "prepped" for action as of April 9th. The F-35's, despite some of their issues, sound pretty cool:

www.cbc.ca...

I'm not daunted by any downsizing of the USAF. My grandfather was one of the first enlisted into the newly formed USAF in 1947. If I remember correctly, the point of the USAF was air supremacy and nuclear capability in order to insure that our atomic capabilities were always well funded and separately managed because of their sensitive nature. Only 10 bomb groups were in the original USAF, including my grandfather's--the 509th Composite. The USAF was originally only 10-20k personnel--SAC. Over the last 66 years, that has expanded to over 330,000 active duty personnel. That's a pretty phenomenal growth. Our military has managed to stay ahead of the game for decades in terms of military prowess since the 40's and, maybe I'm biased (probably lol), but our USAF is one of our best military branches. I have total and absolute faith that General Welsh knows what he's doing in making these particular cuts.

I do not think we have a consensys that this is a bad idea, i.e. grounding 1/3 of our aircraft. We need the aircraft to remain active to keep are aircrews and support personnel trained. If 1/3 of our active force is grounded, then they lose a lot of training opportunities. Pilots have already complained publicly that they do not get enough flying time and this will make the problem worse.
We are in such bad financial shape that the replacement aircraft, the F-35 could be cancelled. This seems inconceivable, but cost cutting and the WH determined to gut our defensive capabilities will make this the ultimate embarrassment for the military establishment.

Also, nobody has or will try to invade the US. The US is being killed slowly from a cancer from within, starting in Washington DC.

reply to post by WhiteAlice


The F-15, F-16, and A-10 will be replaced by the F-35, EVENTUALLY. The current F-35 IOC for just the required software has slipped to 2019, and is in danger of slipping more as the software issues continue. Current aircraft, such as the F-35Bs delivered to MCAS Yuma are barely operational, and can't be used for anything but basic pilot training.

They've only been flying the plane for a year, and everything is still so new that his trainees are not allowed to "push the envelope" as they would like to do. They can't fly at night yet. They can't fly in bad weather. They can't fly too fast, or turn too tight, or carry any real weapons. And the millions of lines of software code that the plane relies on are still being written.

www.cbc.ca...

The F-35 is the F-111 or B-1 all over again. The F-111 and B-1 had many technical issues lead to numerous and costly delays that were threaten with termination many times. In fact, the B-1A was cancelled by Pres. Carter and brought back as a much improved B-1B by Pres. Reagan. The F-35 is too far in to development to cancel and the current fleet is too old to be effective much past 10 more years of airframe fatigue and upgrade cut backs.
Cutting 1/3 of the USAF is mind numbing. If our defense gets so seriously depleted by budget cuts, then what calamity can we ever recover from? Another war with Iran or NK would throw us off the wall and humpy dumpty would break into many pieces. It seems that the US Govt can't be that inept and that this is a concerted effort to break us.

Interesting graphic on TheAviationist today about the units being stood down, as well as the ones that will receive the flight hours.

theaviationist.com...

The 555th (F-16) out of Aviano AB Italy is grounded, both the 482nd and 494th (F-15E) out of RAF Lakenheath, the 81st (A-10C closing) out of Spangdahlem, 303rd (A-10C) out of Whiteman AFB, 77th (F-16) out of Shaw AFB, the 11th, 20th, 96th (B-52H) out of Barksdale AFB, the 158th Fighter Wing (F-16C) out of Burlington ANGB, 336th (F-15E) out of Seymour Johnson AFB, 382nd (F-15E) out of Mountain Home AFB, 18th Aggressor (F-16C) out of Eileson, 169th (F-16C) out of McEntire JNGB, 187th (F-16C) out of Maxwell AFB, and the 94th (F-22) out of Joint Base Langley are all grounded.

The 44th (F-15C) is basic mission capable until July, then combat mission capable, the 67th (F-15C) and 961st AAC (E-3B) out of Kadena AB, the 14th (F-16C) out of Misawa AB, the 79th (F-16C) is basic mission capable until July, the combat mission capable, the 38th (RC-135V/W) and the 45th (TC-135S) out of Offut AFB, 75th (A-10C) basic mission capable, 27th (F-22) Joint Base Langley basic mission capable, 421st and 4th (F-16C) basic mission capable (4th until redeployment). Unless noted otherwise, all are basic mission capable.

There's some question on the 960th, 963rd, 964th, 965th and 966th AACS (E-3B) out of Tinker AFB, the 41st and 43rd ECS (EC-130) out of Davis Monthan AFB, and the 9th and 28th BS (B-1B) out of Dyess AFB as to what their status truly is.