(Marine Corps Times) Backtalk: Crisis looms for aging fleet

[unhappycamper]

Crisis looms for aging fleet
By Anthony H. Cordesman and Hans Ulrich Kaeser

No military service has an affordable modernization program, and no service has shown effective leadership in modernization and procurement at the level of the secretary and the chief of staff. Instead, there is an ill-concealed struggle to solve these problems by either raising the defense budget or somehow getting more funding at the expense of other services and programs.

However, the modernization of American tactical aircraft is at the crisis point. Current programs have escalated in cost to the point where some act as “force shrinkers” rather than “force multipliers.” The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps have made serious cuts in existing combat aircraft, in part to fund modernization plans they will never have the money to fully implement.

Tactical air capabilities have declined from 5,783 aircraft in 1992 to 3,985 in 2000 and 3,542 in 2008.

Unrealistic plans, cost escalations, failures in risk management and significant delays in delivery can tear widening gaps in the forces’ inventories. The Air Force and Navy may be able to solve some of these problems by extending the service lives of existing legacy platforms. However, there are neither feasibility studies of such extensions nor cost plans to capture them in the budgets.

In the case of the F/A-18 Hornet, the Navy extended the service-life flight hours from 6,000 to 8,000 and is planning a further extension to 10,000 hours. Increased costs for upgrades or maintenance of such extended platforms are not included in the service’s budgets, neither are increased risks of flying the aircraft for much longer than they were intended to. Recent inspections of the Navy’s fleet raise further doubts about the feasibility of such extensions. Yet, the Navy relies on timely delivery of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will be the only fighter procurement program starting in 2010.


Rest of article at: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/community/opinion/marine_backtalk_airpower_112408/%2e



uhc comment: If you guys stopped buying expensive new aircraft, you dollars would go a bit farther. I mean, come on, $355 million for an F-22 and $239 million for an F-35? The F/A-18 Super Hornet costs $69 million. The last delivered F-15 cost $29.9 million. Did you know the P-51 Mustang cost $61,000 off the assembly line?