Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Grounding of F-15s Stretching Air Defense System

Yikes.

The grounding of hundreds of F-15s because of dangerous structural defects is straining the nation’s air defense network, forcing some states to rely on their neighbors’ fighter jets for protection, and Alaska to depend on the Canadian military.

The F-15 is the sole fighter at many of the 16 or so “alert” sites around the country, where planes and pilots stand ready to take off at a moment’s notice to intercept hijacked airliners, Cessnas that wander into protected airspace, and other threats.

The Air Force grounded about 450 F-15s after one of the fighters began to break apart in the air and crashed Nov. 2 in Missouri. An Air Force investigation found “possible fleet-wide airworthiness problems” because of defects in the metal rails that hold the fuselage together. It is not clear when the F-15s will be allowed to fly again.

Compounding the problem created by the grounding, another fighter jet used for homeland defense, the F-16, is in high demand for Iraq operations. And the next-generation fighter, the F-22 Raptor, is only slowly replacing the aging F-15.

Hopefully those F-15s are ready to fly in an emergency regardless of the risk.

(4) Comments
Posted by Owen at 2330 hrs
Military

  1. What is silly about this is that we have Navy and Marine Corps air stations around the country with hundreds of F/A-18’s that could respond where the aging F-15s are grounded.  But instead they sit around.  They’re used only for normal flight training.  Why not equip those aircraft with some weapons and start rotating the pilots through an alert schedule?  Seems like a no-brainer to me…

    Posted by David on December 27, 2007 at 0104 hrs


  2. Well you know the AP reporters. They like telling part of the story. especially the left slanted part of the story. Some clown like Murtha will get up now and claim it’s because we are in Iraq.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 27, 2007 at 0842 hrs


  3. But instead they sit around.

    That doesn’t really describe what they’re doing.  At any given moment the squadrons are training, getting ready to deploy, or resetting from a deployment.  Deploying to cover the F-15s mission would require a major reset.

    I have no doubt that they maintain a few birds on alert status ‘just in case’ - but it’s probably more that the Air Force has not asked or does not see the need for it.

    Posted by Brian on December 27, 2007 at 1242 hrs


  4. Mr. Svendsun has it exactly right.  The Falcons/Hornets (F-17/F18) are a superior “home defense” plane.  The F-15 is a fine aircraft but the stresses put on those planes are not up to the metallurgy required. 

    Not a blame…it’s just that the engineering was ahead of the technology.

    My advice is…get all the F-22 Raptors we can or cannot afford.  It’s the best Joint Strike design out there.  I know some guys who have flown it and it’s hard to understand them since they’re drooling so much.

    Posted by The Asian Badger on December 29, 2007 at 0024 hrs


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