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According to a Military.com story dated December 8th, 2014, Two F-16s and one F-15 crashed recently and there is concern about the safety of these aircrafts.
Pilots and crew chiefs especially, what do you say about this report? Anything to it? What should we do?
Pilots and crew chiefs especially, what do you say about this report? Anything to it? What should we do?
Posted in these groups: 
Air Power
Air Power
Posted 11 y ago
Responses: 5
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What are the two oldest operational planes in the AF inventory? The first B-52 serial numbers started out 54- so they are 60 years old, they were produced into the 60's. Some current B-52 jocks are flying the planes their fathers and grandfathers flew! The A-10 Warthog was developed in the late 60's, I was a DAF civilian at McClellan AFB when the AF brought the first A-10 into McClellan AFB as we were the support depot for them. so the Warthog is a little over 40 years in inventory I don't know if there are any three generation families of warthog jockeys or not. Properly maintained these planes can fly forever. The B-52's were losing wing integrity in the late 50's, the wing attachment bolts were hollow to allow routing wiring to route through them. The nuclear mission required an immonen maneuver to escape the blast, this over stressed the wing mount bolts. Crews from McClellan AFB had to be sent to locations where the wing bolts were too far gone to allow flight to our depot.
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I haven't worked on fixed wing a/c, but I can only assume protocols are similar to rotary. All of the components on an a/c have a lifespan. Some parts are months, some are years, some are decades. As long as those parts are properly maintained and replaced then they'll last a very long time. Every now and then you have an incident like the one that just happened in SC where a part has a catastrophic failure. Sometimes you can see it before it happens, other times you can't.
The military is working on upgrading existing a/c and retiring old variants. My unit just got rid of our last A model UH-60 a month or two ago. Now we're all A+ and L. I'm sure in a few more years when Big Army is bored with the M model, our L and A+ models will be gone. (Hopefully not though. The A+ models my last unit had when we were in Afghanistan out performed the L and totally blew away the M. The A+ is a little tempermental, but a beast.)
The military is working on upgrading existing a/c and retiring old variants. My unit just got rid of our last A model UH-60 a month or two ago. Now we're all A+ and L. I'm sure in a few more years when Big Army is bored with the M model, our L and A+ models will be gone. (Hopefully not though. The A+ models my last unit had when we were in Afghanistan out performed the L and totally blew away the M. The A+ is a little tempermental, but a beast.)
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As long as they stop landing, err I mean crashing them in the enemy combat zones.
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I get a kick out of these arguments.
As MSG John Wirts mentioned if you do proper maintenance these aircraft last for a very long time. All maintenance guys know what happens to Aircraft, Ships, Missiles, Guns, etc....that maintenance is not properly done on. Yes, it would be nice to all have brand new toys to kill the bad guys with, but can we pay the price for it? Nope, can't pay it. Anyone had to borrow from Peter to pay Paul when it comes to fixing things?
And to think we have some of the best gear in the world and some of the best maintained gear in the world.
As MSG John Wirts mentioned if you do proper maintenance these aircraft last for a very long time. All maintenance guys know what happens to Aircraft, Ships, Missiles, Guns, etc....that maintenance is not properly done on. Yes, it would be nice to all have brand new toys to kill the bad guys with, but can we pay the price for it? Nope, can't pay it. Anyone had to borrow from Peter to pay Paul when it comes to fixing things?
And to think we have some of the best gear in the world and some of the best maintained gear in the world.
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MSG John Wirts
Look at our obsession with classic cars, look at velocity channel and see 50s, 60s, and 70s cars, rescued from piles of junk to fully restored and modified functional cars, engines upgraded, suspension upgraded and brakes changed from drum to disk. The finished product is much better then the original. The B-52s, and A10s are old airframes, but the navigation and avionics are fairly modern. When I first joined the Army in 1962 I flew from Ft Gordon to Fort Dix in a converted C-47, the recip engines had been replaced with turbo prop engines one of the better aircraft. That plane in its time and still today is one of the most efficient aircraft ever made. There were some made as gliders, I don't remember the designation for the glider, but few were made as they were needed as cargo planes.
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