USAF News & Discussions

[EagleEyes]

USAF To Limit Cut in Flight Training Hours
Plans for C-17, C-5 Fleets Attract Senators’ Queries

The U.S. Air Force is stepping back from a cost-cutting plan to reduce flight training hours by 10 percent.

Under pressure from lawmakers who control the service’s budget, Gen. Michael Moseley, chief of staff, said he would try to limit the cut to 7.5 percent.

“At a 7.5 percent reduction of flying hours, we’re still at low risk,” Moseley told senators during a March 21 hearing of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee.

The session was one of several appearances Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne made on Capitol Hill as they campaigned for the service’s $137 billion budget for 2008.

The flight-hour issue drew the attention of Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the subcommittee.

“What risks are you taking by reducing the time?” Inouye asked.
The danger, Moseley said, was expecting simulators to offer aircrews the same experience as flying.

“There are only so many things you can do in a simulator, before you have to fly,” Moseley said.

While simulators have become an accepted part of training for aircrews on large planes such as the C-17 Globemaster III, there are still questions about how much fighter training can be done in simulators since machines don’t reproduce the physical stress of high-G maneuvers.

Moseley, a career fighter pilot, explained he would be comfortable with a 7.5-percent reduction because it would not move too much training out of cockpits.

“I think we’re at about the right balance on that, and I’m not willing to go much further,” the general said.

Now, Moseley said, Air Force budget experts must figure how much the additional flying hours will cost and how to pay for the hours. The Air Force had been proposing to spend $7.4 billion to pay for 1.5 million flying hours. Moseley’s new plan would add about 40,000 hours to the budget.

Personnel

On personnel issues, a common question senators asked Moseley and Wynne was how the Defense Department’s plan to expand the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 troops would affect the Air Force’s plan to shrink its active-duty numbers to about 318,000 airmen by the end of 2009.

The Air Force leaders said they wouldn’t have an answer until this summer, when they will have seen details on how the Army will use the additional soldiers. Wynne hopes the Army will allocate some of the positions to jobs that the Air Force now performs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The idea of “every airman, a rifleman” is not acceptable in the long term when the airmen are needed to do their Air Force jobs, Wynne said.
Among aircraft questions, the most immediate concerns focused on airlift.

http://defensenews.com/story.php?F=2642508&C=airwar

 

[EagleEyes]

More Predators Sought for USAF, But Service Short on Crew

By TOM VANDEN BROOK, USA TODAY


The Air Force has lost about 40 percent of its Predator unmanned aircraft and lacks enough trained crews to meet the demand for battlefield surveillance in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to military officials and analysts.
The Predator’s success in spotting enemy activity has become an important asset for troops in the field. Commanders ask for Predator surveillance three times more than the Air Force can deliver, said Lt. Col. Matthew Bannon, chief of unmanned aerial systems at Langley Air Force Base, Va.
This year, Predator flight hours are expected to exceed 70,000 hours, more than triple the total in 2003, the war’s first year.
“If you asked me if we had enough people — pilots, sensor operators, mission coordinators, etc. — I would tell you no,” Bannon said in an e-mail interview.
Of the 139 Predators delivered to the Air Force, 53 have been lost, records show.
The Air Force wants 22 more of the $4.5 million aircraft in the emergency war funding bill being debated in Congress this week, budget records show.
Bannon said there has been an “insatiable appetite for Predator” in the field. He says no missions have been scratched because of lost aircraft since he joined the program in 2003.
Predators can spot enemy troops and insurgents hiding improvised explosive devices, the homemade bombs that are the biggest killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Commanders leading patrols or convoys quickly become dependent on Predator surveillance, said John Pike, a military analyst at Globalsecurity.
Predators are particularly valuable against targets who emerge for a few moments and may disappear, said Christopher Bolkcom, a military analyst at the Congressional Research Service.
The aircraft’s sensors can detect quickly moving targets that can be attacked with its arsenal of Hellfire missiles, Bolkcom said.
“Chasing terrorists is a growth environment for Predator,” he said.
Predators “provide persistence over a target and precision fire, but they are not highly survivable,” says Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institution in Arlington, Va.
Iraq’s extreme heat is damaging Predators, according to Air Force budget documents.
“A more capable aircraft air conditioner is required,” the documents says.
Crew shortages are more troubling than downed aircraft, Bannon said. Crew members are trained at the Air Force Predator school, which graduated 105 crews in 2006. The Air Force expects 120 two-member crews to graduate in 2007 and 148 in 2008. It takes about three months to train a crew.

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2660309&C=navwar

 

[EagleEyes]

Short on service crew? NOT.. send some to Pakistan, i am sure they can be used more.