When Maj. Stephen Stilwell's F-15C Eagle jet fighter broke apart in flight 18,000 feet over Missouri last November, Air National Guard leaders feared their whole F-15 fleet might be grounded indefinitely.
The cockpit of Stilwell's fighter split from the rest of his jet during a routine 7.8 G turn. Stilwell ejected, breaking an arm and dislocating a shoulder.
Age was the prime suspect in the incident. It seemed that Stilwell's 27-year-old fighter had simply worn out.
That was ominous because 27 years is the average age lor Air Guard F-15s, Lt. Gen. Craig R. McKinley, the Air Guard director, told House and Senate committees this spring.
That might be young for a pilot, but it's an advanced age for military aircraft. And the Guard's aerial refueling tankers and airlifters are even older, he said.
Accident investigators discovered that Stilwell's plane had a defective longeron. The critical support structure was thinner than required by specifications.
But McKinley blamed age as well as the longeron for causing the F-15 to "literally [come] apart in mid-air."
"It concerns me that we've lost five F-15s in the past year," he told lawmakers. The mechanical problems and structural failures that caused the crashes are symptoms of "this aging fleet of aircraft" in the Air Guard, he said.
After Stilwell's crash, the Air Force grounded the entire F-15 fleet, and detailed inspections turned up 162 planes with longeron problems.
All but six of the Guard's F-15s have since returned to flying, said Col. Richard Dennee, the Air Guard's director of plans and programs, earlier this summer.
Of those, two will be repaired and returned to duty, two others will be patched up enough for a final flight to the warplane "bone yard" in Arizona, and one will be used for training aircraft mechanics, Dennee said.
But that doesn't end worry over the F-15s.
The Air Guard will-conduct "stress tests and teardowns to see if there are any other problems," Dennee said. Then a fleet viability board will evaluate the results.
"We could be good to go, or we could be restricted," he said.
The Air Guard needs to modernize and recapitalize along with the active-component Air Force, McKinley told the House Armed Services Committee.
But unless modernization plans are modified, that's not going to happen and the Guard, somehow, has to keep its F-15s flying.
They're supposed to remain in service until 2026, Dennee said. And a few might keep flying until 2030.
The Guard's other top-line fighters, 340 F-16s. are about a decade younger than the F-15s, but are also beginning to show some wear and tear.
Bulkhead cracks have been discovered in 18 F-los, prompting the Guard to ground seven. The other 11 continue to fly, but undergo thorough inspections after every 10 flight hours.
Denee characterized the cracks as "some minor issues" that will be repaired.
But Brig. Gen. Peter Pawling, commander of the Hawaii National Guard's 154th Wing and chairman of the NGAUS fighter modernization task force sees cause for concern.
"They're flying the heck out of these planes" in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for homeland defense, he says.
Despite being 25 years old on average, the Guard's 75 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs are in "pretty good shape," Dennee said. "We finished putting new hard wings on the A-10s."
With reskinned wings, the Guard's A-10s are expected to be good until 2030, he said.
The first genuine modernization for Air Guard fighters is expected in 2010, when the Hawaii Guard receives 18 F-22 Raptors.
The 154th Fighter Wing will own the planes and an active-component Air Force squadron will share them as an associate unit, Pawling said.
Those might be the only F-22s the Guard gets for a long time.
Senior Air Force leaders were pushing hard to convince Congress to buy more than 183 F-22s.
Perhaps too hard. In June, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates fired Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T Michael Moseley, in part, because they differed publicly with Gates on the number of F-22s the Air Force needs.
Some Guard leaders fear that the F-22 will no longer be an Air Force priority.
The Guard's only other F-22 unit, Virginia's 192nd Fighter Wing, flies planes owned by the active-component Air Force at Langley Air Force Base, Va.
No additional F-22s also could limit the number of newer F-15Cs that could be cascaded from the active-component to the Guard. Often referred to as "Golden Eagles," these aircraft require little to no upgrading.
But Air Force officials recently told lawmakers that any plans to replace older Air Guard F-15Cs-many of which require significant modifications-with Golden Eagles were "predicated on a procurement of greater than 183 F-22As."
The Air Guard's next hope for aircraft modernization is the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The question is, when?
Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., says the Air Force told him Duluth's 148th Fighter Wing would be among the first Guard units to receive the F-35-"sometime after 2013."
Dennee predicts 2017.
"The JSF timeline has not been kid out yet," he said. "We're in the roadmap, but because of slips in the program, I think it will be 2017 when we first start getting them. We think it needs to be earlier."
In the meantime, the 148th "is flying some of the oldest F-16s in our nation's inventory. They are too old to be deployed to combat zones and inadequate for many training activities," Oberstar says.
Minnesota hopes to replace its old F-16s with newer ones that the active-component Air Force hands down as it acquires its own F-35s.
The Guard's decades-old aircraft require constant component upgrades "just to be equal to the enemy," Pawling says. "It's the only way we can stay relevant."
Topping the upgrade list for F-15 upgrades are active-electronically-scanned-array radars, "which will give us better target-detection capability," he says. The first new radars are to begin arriving in 2009.
The F-15s also need Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing Systems, which the Guard Bureau says provide "a quantum leap in air-to-air weapons employment and more complete sensor-to-pilot fusion."
Guard F-16s need the same cueing systems. Other F-16 upgrades include commercial central-interface units, color multifunction displays, advanced identification friend-or-foe systems and the ability to launch AIM-9X missiles and small diameter bombs.
But "putting new equipment on old machines will only get us so far," Pawling says. "To be relevant with the active-duty, we need to fly the same type of aircraft they will be flying. The Guard has to be included in the Air Force's recapitalization plans."
For now, "we don't feel like we are," he says.
The oldest planes in the Guard's inventory are KC-135 Stratotanker refuelers, which average 44 years. C-5 Galaxy cargo planes are next at 35 years.
With the Pentagon rebidding the contract for the Air Force's new KC-X (Newsbreaks, page 16), the tankers' fate is again uncertain. What is certain is that Guard maintainers will have to keep its old tankers flying for the foreseeable future.
C-5s present another complicated problem.
The Guard would like to retire the oldest and most problem-prone C-5As, but Congress won't allow it.
If they can't be retired, "we'd like to see them modernized," Dennee said.
But that, too, looks unlikely.
The Air Force decided in February to upgrade 49 newer C-5Bs and two C-5Cs, but recommended against upgrading 59 C-5As.
Since they're the oldest, least reliable and most costly C-5s to maintain, "there's no guarantee we'd get a return on investment" by upgrading them, said Gen. Arthur J. Lichte, head of the Air Mobility Command.
The $7.7 billion Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program (RERP) for C-5Bs and Cs plans to equip the planes with more reliable and fuel efficient engines and modem avionics.
Dropping the C-5As from the RERP program saves about $10 billion.
There's good news for another Guard airlifter, the C-17 Globemaster III.
The latest $162 billion emergency war funding bill includes $3.6 billion to buy 15 new C-17s. Eight of those are for the Guard, Dennee said.
The Guard's other major airlifter, the C-130 Hercules, is in pretty decent condition.
Three units fly the newest C-130Js, and only a handful of the oldest E-model C-130s remain in the fleet, Dennee said.
"We're okay with what we've got," he said.
Nonetheless, some airlifter upgrades are in order.
"The C-130, C-5 and C-17 aircraft all operate in environments of increasing levels of threat and complexity," McKinley told Congress in a posture statement this spring. They need "the best protection and warning systems available."
That means modern digital radar warning receivers to improve situational awareness and infrared countermeasures to protect against missile attacks.
Like the Army Guard, the Air Guard is scheduled to receive the new Joint Cargo Aircraft. But unlike the Army Guard, which begins receiving C-27J Spartans later this year, the Air Guard must wait until 2012 to get its first three planes. It is scheduled to receive 24 by the end of 2015.
These small, twin engine cargo planes are designed to ferry war supplies "the last tactical mile" to troops far forward where landing strips are short and primitive.
They look like a small C-130 and they share the C-130s avionics and its Rolls Royce engines.
C-27Js will provide new aircraft for some of the Air Guard now losing their planes as a result of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) rulings.
Other flying units stripped of their planes by BRAC now fly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
"Obviously, there was some resistance to losing the manned flying mission," Dennee said. But once units began flying UAVs in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was clear that the mission was important, he said.
There are UAV units in Arizona, California, North Dakota and Texas and "an insatiable appetite" for their services in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.
Guard aviators now fly a third of the UAV combat air patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. A key "benefit is that you don't have to be in theater to fly." The mission keeps units "very busy at home. You work long hours, but you're not over there. It's a good model for the Guard."
In late 2009 or early 2010, New York's 174th Fighter Wing will be the first Guard unit to fly MQ-9 Reapers, an authentic attack UAV.
Reapers are sometimes compared to F-16s, the planes the 174th is giving up. A typical weapons payload for the UAV might include eight Hellfire missiles, two 500-pound JDAM precision bombs and two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. In all, Reapers can carry up to 3,000 pounds of weapons.
When armed with small diameter bombs, each Reaper will be able to strike 16 targets with precision weapons on a single mission. Incredibly, that's what the Air Force bragged the B-2 bomber could do when it flew its first combat missions in the 1999 bombing runs over Yugoslavia.
While F-16s fly much faster and are much more agile, Reapers have much greater staying power. It can loiter over a target for 18 to 24 hours.
There's another reason UAVs have a bright future in the Air Guard. Reapers cost about $7 million apiece; F-16s cost more than $30 million.
© 2008 National Guard Association of the United States Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Source: National Guard
