The need for more planes...

If there is any doubt about the Air Force's need for more planes, this should remove it:

Officials at Air Force Special Operations Command say it will become increasingly hard to keep two key aircraft flying: The MC-130H Combat Talon II, used to drop commandos into hostile territory and then retrieve them, and the AC-130U, a hulking gunship that flies low to deliver firepower, are both in need of substantial overhauls.

"We are literally flying the wings off these two airplanes," said Brig. Gen. Brad Heithold, director of the command's plans, programs, requirements and assessments office at Hurlburt Field, Fla.

There are only 20 Combat Talons and 17 AC-130Us. This small fleet is in heavy demand by special operations forces around the globe. In 2001, the AC-130Us flew just over 5,200 hours. The gunships logged more than 9,000 hours in 2007. It's comparable, Heithold said, to putting 70,000 miles on a car in a single year instead of a more normal 12,000 miles.

In a word: Yikes.

Time to do some earmarking, if necessary. Yes, I know: The trendy thing is to decry earmarks. But those used to buy more planes for the Air Force are going to be useful. It is also crystal clear that they are needed.

This needs to be an issue.

The Air Force's Plea...

The Air Force Magazine editorial for January is something we need to heed, and soon.

The Air Force's planes are getting old. The KC-135s are over 45 years old. Most of their air crews are younger than that. The F-15s are also old. The average age of an Air Force plane is climbing.

Two planes need urgent replacement: The KC-135s, and the C-130Es. The former could have been replaced by KC-767s long ago, but Congressional objections killed that. The latter is being replaced all-too-slowly by the new C-130J.

Congress needs to get to work. Fast. We got sidetracked earlier this decade due to the 9/11 attacks. That stuff happens. But the peace dividend is now going to cost us a lot of money to set things right. It may have already cost our military lives.

Looks like we need more Raptors...

While most F-15s are in good enough shape to keep serving, I think it's time for Congress to write Lockheed a check for at least another 100 Raptors, and probably more.

The R&D costs have already been recouped, and it's also obvious that the F-15s are aging, and arguably not well. The F-22's a good plane, and it's only $116 million per plane on fly-away costs. For a Congress that can spend billions in earmarks each year, certainly an earmark for another 100 F-22s isn't unreasonable, is it? Maybe two runs of 100 would not be a bad idea.

There ain't no such thing as too many Raptors.

I mean, if you're gonna pork, make it useful pork!

Air Force dust-off...

The Air Force is pitching in for the medical evacuation mission over in Afghanistan, and doing a fine job of it. Part of this is due to a lack for the rescue squadron's original mission - saving downed airmen.

The sad thing is, they are relying on aging choppers to carry out the mission. The HH-47 has been tied up in a string of protests and media battles (the KC-X aerial tanker has touched this off, too).

One wishes that people might be able to remember the admonition Defensetech.org laid out this past August.

Sober people can debate the strengths and weaknesses of the Boeing win. We’re agnostic on the issue other than to say that it seems the Air Force picked a heavy lift helicopter for a medium lift job. Hearing the Boeing folks talk about the superior range, speed and payload of the HH-47 was kind of like hearing Boeing say the C-17 is better than the Lockheed Martin C-130…of course, they’re different aircraft in separate classes.

But it’s starting to get to the point where the debate has devolved into the arcane world of defense contracting procedure and who dotted which “i” and crossed what “t” and when. At the same time, America has hundreds of thousands of troops worldwide in combat who will need this capability and it may start getting to the point where the bickering comes at the cost of our troops’ lives.

It really doesn't get any simpler than that. The Air Force is doing its part in the war on terror. We need to back them up with the best possible equipment and plenty of it.

A Predator crashes...

The Air Force admitted the loss of another Predator. This follows the loss of at least one more, possibly two, late in November (the Air Force fact sheet listed two other crashes in late November).

Back in March, USA Today reported that the Air Force had lost 53 Predators out of 139 delivered. The Air Force fact sheets reports an inventory of 97. More are on the way to both the Air Force and the Army.

One hopes the Air Force and Army have some backup options in mind - because the loss rates are very reminiscent of the losses suffered by the 8th Air Force over Germany in 1943. Those were considered unsustainable.

Seems to me that it is time to think about reconnaissance versions of the F-35 and F-22.

Army C-17s?

If this report from Aviation Leak - I mean, Aviation Week- is true, then this is a good thing.

After all, with apologies to Robert A. Heinlein, TANSTATMC17s - There Ain't No Such Thing As Too Many C-17s.

Defensetech has it right...

I cannot put my feelings on the CSAR-X controversy better than Defensetech put it last week:

[I]t’s starting to get to the point where the debate has devolved into the arcane world of defense contracting procedure and who dotted which “i” and crossed what “t” and when. At the same time, America has hundreds of thousands of troops worldwide in combat who will need this capability and it may start getting to the point where the bickering comes at the cost of our troops’ lives.

I'm just speaking for Harold here, but if you ask me, it's time to start getting this chopper fielded. In any case, as I have pointed out at Strategypage, the HH-47 blew the competition out of the water. It wasn't my first choice, either, I might add. I favored an HV-22, myself. Why the V-22 didn't get a shot is a mystery to me. But it didn't. That said, we got a darn good rescue chopper that can do the job - if Congress stops the bickering and starts funding.

We have troops in combat who need these choppers. Congress, by bickering, is rapidly approaching dereliction of duty.

Blackstar: Real Deal, or Misdirection?

My co-blogger discussed Blackstar last year when Aviation Week had it on the cover.

I've always had two questions about Blackstar:

1. Why that architecture?

2. Why then?

The second question is the real puzzle. Contrary to popular belief, governments can usually keep this sort of thing secret. We knew absolutely nothing about the F-117 prior to the Defense Department announcing it in 1988. We didn't get a chance to see one up close until 1990.

In the early 1990s, Aviation Week carried a number of stories about exotic aircraft. At that time, the reason was obvious: budgets were getting cut, and while black projects are relatively easy to keep alive (because their natural enemies most likely do not know about them), they're also, ironically, fairly easy to kill when funds get tight (because their natural allies most likely do not know about them). The only way to garner support for such a program is to make some judicious leaks here and there.

No such event militated in favor of revealing Blackstar last year.

Now, to the question of architecture. The Blackstar design requires the mothership to tote the entire spacecraft up to launch altitude; it requires high-speed separation of spacecraft and mother ship (which is hazardous to both); and it requires exotic equipment (mating and demating facilities in particular).

In short, it's for those who want to go to space in the worst possible way.

Now, consider the vehicle described in this link. Size is held to a minimum by using aerial refueling to transfer oxidizer to the vehicle after launch; infrastructure requirements and prelaunch checklists are held to a minimum because the fuel and oxidizer are non-cryogenic; the bird can take off and land from just about any Air Force base worldwide if necessary; and the resulting "Black Horse" spaceplane is about the same size as an F-16.

Consider, also, the fact that this paper is part of a larger study conducted in 1993-1994. That's thirteen years ago--more than enough time to build hardware, validate it, and put it into service.

That's thirteen years ago. The estimated cost for an RDT&E program was $150 million. Allowing for the usual tripling of RDT&E costs, that's about half a billion. Everett Dirksen's quip about "a billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money" comes to mind. In a national budget of over two trillion dollars, $500 million is a rounding error.

So perhaps we have an aerospace wing based out at Groom Lake, ready to rain "Rods from God" down onto the heads of evildoers and miscreants around the world.

How to cover up the odd sonic boom as a Black Horse boosts into orbit? Simple, blame it on a concept that's borderline unworkable and probably never made it past initial hardware testing.

It's the magician distracting you with his left hand while his right hand palms the card . . .