Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Maverick on January 18, 2008, 04:57:42 PM
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I was checking out at the commissary today and saw a headline on the AF Times that looked interesting. It indicated that there were 191 F15's that may be permanently grounded. I didn't get the paper to read the article. Does anyone (Eagle maybe) have any info on this. I'm just curious about it.
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Does it have anything to do with this? http://forums.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=224429
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Yes, for a while they grounded all F-15's until they could figure out what caused it. Some are back in service now, but IIRC there's some sort of manufacturing structural defect that can cause the cockpit to fall off. Whoops.
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During the inspection of the F-15 fleet, after the break up of one in flight over Mo, they found around 191 of the aircraft had the same manufacturing flaw in a longeron in the fuselage. The longeron is a major structural member of the fuselage and is not a feasible repair/replacement part on the F-15.
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IIRC this does not affect the F15E strike eagles.
I think this is just a ploy from AF brass to get more F22s LOL
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The AF released a statement pretty much to the effect that they found well over 100 F-15s that have serious structural problems (in addition to previously known issues already affecting the whole fleet), and that the longerons apparently did not meet manufacturing specifications. They specifically did not answer questions about fault/blame or speculate on solutions. So I will do that based on my own unofficial opinion :)
There are a couple issues that come to mind.
Fault? Someone is going to ask why we're going to end up either retiring 150ish F-15s that we counted on to fly another 5-10 years. That's a lot of money and lost capability, and it will take a lot more money to regain the lost capability. So... there may be a blame game if it turns out that there was in fact a manufacturing defect. Still though, what's the point? Way back when, an F-15C probably cost $20-$25 million to make, and their value declines annually. So the damages might be a couple mil per plane, which wouldn't buy you more than one or two replacement raptor.
Impact? We have suffered a huge dent in both offensive and defensive combat capability. We will dramatically increase the utilization rates on other airframes. Who pays the piper when we realize that we've doubled the ops temp on F-22s and air defense F-16s (not to mention the F-16's higher reliance on tankers), and they start wearing out 5-10 years sooner than planned? That could be a huge long-term planning issue.
Solution? Repair (if it's even possible), or replace?
If repair, then who pays for it, and where does the money come from? Can they even be rebuilt at all? Even if it costs $10 mil to rebuild each one, that might even be conceiveably *cheaper* than replacement alternatives.
If replace, then replace with what? You can get 2 new-build F-15Es for the price of a single F-22 even though the F-22 per-plane cost is plummeting down towards a relatively reasonable 100 mil each, and most (all?) operators, and the entire Israeli AF, know that for high risk and high complexity missions, there is no subsitute for having a WSO present. The IAF is going to upgrade 2-seat F-16s to interoperate with any F-35s they buy, because the Israelis think that the F-35 will be LESS OPERATIONALLY EFFECTIVE in critical roles than existing 2-seat F-16s. This is a sobering reality that is wholly unaddressed in USAF procurement plans. However, there is a pretty much firm policy that the USAF won't be spending any more money on non-stealth combat aircraft except for a very few special programs.
Besides, there is no way in hell the F-35 will have a fly-away cost of roughly $37 mil like originally envisioned. It's going to cost almost as much as an F-22 by the time the F-22 production line ends and the F-35 swings into full rate production.
So... The unappealing answer seems to be exactly what USAF planners have been saying all along... We need more F-22s. Even before we lost about a third of the F-15 fleet overnight, we needed about double the numbers that have been funded. Now, we have an unexpected immediate shortfall so not only do we probably need to buy more of something, we need them pretty quickly too.
USAF leaders have been saying this (unexpected problems with old airframes) would happen for over a decade, and everyone was convinced they were crying wolf. Fine, we lost a second F-15 to age-related structural failure (there was another, less publicized one a while ago, and there have been a few dramatic but non-catastrophic wing pylon failures). What are congressional oversight committee members and senior civilian leaders in the pentagon going to say when KC-135s start coming apart inflight too?
My answer? I'd say first buy another 100 or so F-15Es, convert a wing of F-15C squadrons to F-15E squadrons, and give them primary taskings for air defense with secondary attack role (essentially the opposite tasking priority as current F-15E squadrons). They bring an awesome offensive capability, existing F-15Es are being rapidly worn out due to ongoing combat operations, and the F-15E production line is still going strong so we could get them built relatively quickly. Also, there are no publicly known programs to procure anything that is even remotely capable of replacing the capabilities that the F-15E has. Then add another 100-200 F-22s to the shopping cart. Delay or reduce the F-35 program because it is essentially a stealthy F-16 plus some nifty technology updates, and it may actually end up bringing LESS firepower to the fight than the F-16, depending on what capabilities you use for the comparison. It certainly won't have any more weapon loadout or range/endurance than an F-16, and it's probably going to be a lot slower than an F-22.
Long term, take a really serious look at an FB-22 or F-22 variant that adds a second seat and enough internal weapons carriage room to hold the larger weapons that only the F-15E can currently carry (AGM-130, GBU-15, etc).
But I'm not running the show, and I'm really just glad I get to fly trainers. Also glad I don't have to do AF level budgeting or deal with members of congress.
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Good info in your post Eagl. Thanks.
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Eagle I saw a powerpoint on the FB22 once, It looked pretty cool.
One factor that I think you are overlooking with the JSF is the fact that the Marines need their version more than anything and soon. Their harriers are held together with bailing wire and bubble gum.
They need to fix the tanker situation soon too.
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Thanks a bunch Eagle.
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Guns,
I heard *somewhere* (heh) that the navy and marines would be pretty happy to get a couple hundred more superhornets and back out of the F-35 program entirely. The JSF won't be any more stealthy than the goodyear blimp after a week on the boat, and it can't carry 12 amraams like the F-18E can.
But the new paradigm is joint uber-alles (remind anyone of the F-111?) and don't buy anything that isn't stealthy. Maybe there is information that nobody else knows about that is justification for throwing out a couple decades of procurement lessons learned, but I'm not in a position to have that info so I can't and won't trash talk the F-35 program any worse than pointing out that it looks a lot like a stealthy F-16 with the same or smaller bomb load as the F-16.