The NY Times once again stuck their foot in their big mouths and went hammer and tong at the military for the recent crash of an F-15C in Missouri, even before the investigation into the crash is completed. They then made the mistake of offering people to comment on their silly piece. I took them up on it. Their article is posted immediately below and my response follows. It would be nice if these people in the media would even try to get the facts straight when it comes to military issues. If this was an F-15C built in 1980, the likelihood is that it may have been based at Kadena AB in Okinawa. We started getting them in September of 1979, just a few months before I arrived in January 1980, and we rapidly took on a large number to replace the F-4D Phantom II. If it was a Kadena bird, it is likely to have had a lot of salt water intrusion that could have led to later weaknesses. However, almost every aircraft gets a thorough overhaul every few years. These overhauls are not minor reworks but often amount to a complete teardown and rebuild of the aircraft with few original parts left remaining. Often, entire wings are replaced. There are also what are known as Service Life Extension Programs (SLEPS) where major components are replaced or reinforced to ensure a longer service life. In the case of the A-10, an attack plane that has been in service since 1975 and was only in production for a few years (so there are not many that are younger), the wings and other critical structures are actually being rebuilt to tolerances that exceed what the original design allowed for. The biggest thing that the mediots always mislead the public with are the average ages of the planes. They can scream all they want about 30-year old planes but they need to put things in context. The F-15C first came into service in 1979. Ok, fine, that makes the earliest ones--if still operational--28 years old. There are still some A/B models from the 1975-79 era around, but not that many and I would bet that most of them have restricted flight profiles. What the media does not tell the public is that among the F-15s grounded, the F-15E (or variants of it) is still in production with the F-15I for Israel, the F-15K for Korea and the F-15S. Our F-15Es were grounded as well, not because of age but because their mission is to fly at low level, for the most part, to drop bombs (thus the name Strike Eagle). The flight profiles at low altitude are more stressful on an airframe than at altitude because the denser air and the turbulence of winds near the surface really bounce a plane and its wings around. Do a high speed dash at low level in a fighter and you get your fillings loosened--I did it in an RF-4C at 500 knots and 500 ft off of the deck. Flying in an F-15D at altitude, I could almost always make out what the pilot said on the intercom but, in the RF-4C photo recon jet, when we dropped down to deck-skimming altitude, the roar of the denser air rushing past the canopy made it almost impossible to hear even with headphones slammed tight against my ears. Not all planes fly the same missions under the same conditions, so simply saying that one is as old as another, merely by calendar years, shows just how ignorant the media is about military aviation in general, and this issue in particular. Ron http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13tues1.html?ref=opinion Editorial
Structural Failures Published: November 13, 2007 The recent crash of an Air Force F-15 fighter jet - and the grounding of the entire 700-plane fleet as a precautionary measure - is the latest reminder of the tough military budget choices this country will face for the foreseeable future. Even if American troops were withdrawn from Iraq tomorrow, billions of dollars would still be needed to replenish military equipment, swap aging weapons systems for new ones and rebuild and expand ground forces strained to the breaking point by this misguided war. Readers' Comments Share your thoughts on this article. * <http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2007/11/13/opinion/13tues1.ht ml#postComment> Post a Comment > After years of signing blank checks to the Pentagon, the next president and Congress will also have to insist on a serious review of what is truly needed to protect the country from a new generation of threats - and not just line the pockets of contractors and their lobbyists. Although the crash in Missouri on Nov. 2 is still being studied, initial reports suggest that the plane suffered structural failure and disintegrated in the air. That F-15 was built in 1980, but some of the planes in the fleet are more than 30 years old. The problem is that the Air Force's chosen replacement, the F-22 stealth fighter, is both extremely expensive and already out of date - designed originally for air-to-air combat against Soviet style MIG fighters during the cold war. American taxpayers have a right to insist that the Pentagon make sounder choices in the future. The most immediate problem is digging out from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has borne much of the burden, and it will need a lot of help to replace war-worn equipment and replenish a strained and war-weary force. As it has struggled to meet recruiting targets, the Army has had to compromise personnel standards. Last year, 15 percent of recruits needed waivers because they didn't meet requirements on education, medical and lack of a criminal record. That number has risen to 18 percent so far this year. Meanwhile, a large percentage of West Point graduates - the elite corps from which Army officers are drawn - are leaving active duty as soon as their required time is up. Exploding health care expenses for returning veterans and what many servicemen and officers see as a crisis of confidence in military leadership add to the challenges going forward. The Navy and Marine Corps also have their own replacement and modernization problems. The Army and the Marines, having carried these wars, deserve to have their needs addressed first. The United States has spent a staggering $800 billion just on war fighting since Sept. 11, 2001. President Bush has no plan for rebuilding the force, beyond asking for ever more cash. The presidential candidates will have to do a better job. They can start by explaining how they plan to withdraw American troops from Iraq and then how they plan to rebuild a military capable of defending this country from a new generation of threats. Next Article in <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13tues2.html> Opinion (2 of 18) > ------------------------ MY RESPONSE 11-13-07 http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2007/11/13/opinion/13tues1.htm l#postComment The editors of the NY Times might want to do a bit more research on the subject of military equipment before once again embarrassing themselves. First, it is unclear what they mean by "older planes in the fleet" are more than 30 years old". What planes and what fleet? If we are talking the fleet of F-15s, yes, there are some earlier-model F-15A/Bs still in service, but the earlist of those models, which first entered service in 1976, are probably no longer in service. The C and D models, like the C-model that crashed in Missouri, first entered service in 1979, but the more important issue is not age but how often they have been inspected, modified and upgraded. I would strongly suggest that members of the media first allow the USAF to determine precisely what caused the failure of this jet before jumping to conclusions that may only make them appear more inept than they already are in their coverage of military affairs. As to the F-22 already being "outdated," I would like to know where the NY Times gets its information and its expertise in air combat. Yes, the plane was originally designed during the Cold War but the Times makes it sound like all Soviet designs are outdated and gone from the scene. New and updated models of the MiG-29 and an entire family of Sukhoi fighters is currently on the market, in the inventory of many potential adversaries, and not to be dismissed lightly. In addition, the F-22 has been modified and updated to meet current and future threats. The statements made by the NY Times are simply borne out of ignorance. As to idiotic assertions that the Army and Marine Corps should get first choice on new weapons because they have been in the thick of the fighting is simplistic and uninformed, and the paper continues to rail about how we should retreat from Iraq in order to meet future threats without specifying what any of those threats are or how they should be addressed. Once again, the editors of this paper appear to simply spout off with meaningless rhetoric and contractors lining pockets and the war in Iraq rather than contributing to a meaningful disucssion about future plans and weapons purchases. These are the same types of people who screamed about the cost of the F-22 and decried the need for the F-35 as a wasteful boondoggle, claiming that the F-15, undefeated in aerial combat, was more than good enough and did not have to be replaced. Those familiar with military aviation have long known that metal fatigue, corrosion, older designs and early generations of materials technology made it a simple reality that current aircraft would either be extremely expensive to maintain or would be at risk of having their capabilities limited due to age. As for the "fleet" of aircraft, if tne NY Times is talking about all USAF aircraft, perhaps they should take a look at the B-52H, which first entered service in the late 1950s and is projected to be around decades longer. Age is not the only determining factor. F-15s that serve in Okinawa or on the East Coast of the US have to be more concerned about salt water corrosion than those that have served in desert regions or the midwest. And then there is the operational tempo and the types of maneuvers carried out by a particular unit and its aircraft. In addition, each aircraft has its limits and G-loads can be exceeded, doing damage to the aircraft. I worked on the F-15 for four years and flew in the back seat of two F-15Ds, seeing the tremendous stresses that they undergo in even "simple" basic fighter maneuvers, as the crashed F-15C was conducting, something that one news service dismissed as an ordinary mission. There is nothing ordinary about the stresses that these aircraft and their pilots are subjected to. In short, there are a number of factors that have to be considered, but the most important thing is that you need solid information before you jump to conclusions and fail to recognize the real problem. In the world of the NY Times, the loss of one aircraft means scrapping all of them and buying another, and dismissing what is supposed to be the replacement, the F-22. What other fighter aircraft are in development? Does any member of the NY Times have any idea how long it takes to design, test and develop a new aircraft? Just look at the long development of the F-22, V-22 and F-25, for a clue that this does NOT happen overnight. If the NY Times is truly interested in this problem and not in simply making an excuse for another anti-war screed about Iraq, they should do their homework and report factual information. If not, their comments can be dismissed as uninformed and their opinions ignored as irrelevant. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. 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