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IRONY

The conservative website Chronwatch was hacked. This is a despicable act. What is ironic is one of the guys responsible for upkeep of the site labels himself as a security specialist. I guess that just isn't so.

BASE COMMUNITIES JUST DON"T KNOW

The poor people out in the field that are depending on their ship to come in. Everyone at base communities talk about it. And few know the huge risk. Goring said that he could provide enough airlift for the starving soldiers at Stalingrad too.

The F-16 is scheduled to remain in service with the U.S. Air Force until 2025. The planned replacement is the F-35 Lightning II, which is scheduled to enter service in 2011. Shaw is scheduled to receive numerous F-35s.

LATEST EPISODE OF U.K. MOD BUDGET TURF WARS

There is little money for anything in the U.K. MOD. That means all services are fighting for scraps of budget money. The quarrels can get ugly.

A video of the Army and Air Force views can be seen here.

GATES ADMITS 'STRATEGIC RISK' IN USAF PLANS

The USAF top leadership and Defense Secretary Gates are putting the U.S. at "strategic risk".

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates agreed with an Air Force recommendation to retire 250 older aircraft early, to allow the service to reprogram money to other areas. "[The decision] allows us to take some additional strategic risk over the next six to seven years, which we think, given the threat environment and the current strategic interests, is a good time to take this risk," Secretary Gates said.

While all of the USAF should have been taken care of across the "full spectrum" by previous USAF caretakers, it is obvious that USAF can't cover all of its mission needs over the long term in stable fashion. Where stability is funding, training, spare parts, facilities upkeep and so on. Here, the USAF is robbing different communities to shore up others.

The service will reinvest the money into modifying the remaining aircraft, improving munitions and moving manpower into new high-demand requirements. These requirements include unmanned aerial vehicles, the nuclear enterprise and in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Gates is still confused on USAF fighter aircraft.

"At the same time, we also focused on the future of the tactical air force structure and on fifth generation solutions," Secretary Donley said. "Our interest is in getting on with the (F-35 Lightning II) Joint Strike Fighter program."

"Getting on" with the F-35 requires decisions based on solid flight test data which the program lacks. The program has no way of proving that it is affordable. And of course there are the looney comments on investing in blue-sky marketing hype of "sixth-generation" capabilities that Mr. Gates, Mr. Donley and General Schwartz have put their name on.

It gets funnier.

The service ultimately will buy more than 1,700 of these aircraft. The fiscal 2010 budget request looks to increase testing of the aircraft and buying 30.

30 was always part of the program of record for 2010 for all services. Gates isn't making the right connection here either. Of the 30 F-35s for 2010, only 10 of them are for the USAF. By retiring fixable fighter aircraft now on the order of 250, the DOD and USAF are stating that they can do with less fighters as a total requirement. Not just some temporary slight of hand which has the only purpose of trying to squeeze more blood out of a turnip. USAF still has no proof in hand that it can afford more than 48 F-35s per year once full rate production starts up in 2014 (2015 ?, 2016?)

Air Force officials also intend to go ahead with F-22 Raptor modifications, budgeting more than $1 billion for it in fiscal 2010, Secretary Donley said. "We think this is a good package for the Air Force and that it makes good strategic sense."

Secretary of the USAF Mr. Donley doesn't bring anything to the fight either. Like most service secretaries, he knows more about what is on today's lunch menu than what is critical for USAF needs. Case in point was that Washington Post letter that stated it was time to stop the F-22 production at 187 even though there was existing information made public that this was the most risky of airframe numbers to fill out the Raptor community and maintain air domination of U.S. interests over the long haul. His quote above makes little sense. Raptor upgrades were on a firm plan back in 2005 until Operations: USELESS DIRT 1 and 2 robbed funds for the program.

A second area of emphasis is to pay more attention to requirements and to ensure Air Force officials understand the technology risks involved in meeting operator demands for more capabilities.

This is useless since these guys are already guilty of ignoring "operator demands" by letting home air defense go to seed. The USAF has the wrong senior leaders. Mr. Donley, General Schwartz and their predecessors since the end of the Cold War including General McPeek who started the madness of not buying any more "aluminum" fighters have reduced the fighting power of the USAF and significantly reduced its ability to keep ahead of the game if there are major wars to deal with. Look at the map. The USAF area of interest is worldwide. Since there are no air power advocates to make their voice heard without getting stamped out by groupthink, there is little that can be done.

USAF AND AUSTRALIA'S DUD CRUISE MISSILE

The JASSM hasn't dug itself out of a hole created when the program was stopped to do fix-it work after failing a shoot exercise two years ago where some missiles were pulled out of USAF storage and fired.

After what was supposed to be recent successful tests to address failures, the program has still not made enough progress to meet USAF standards. JASSM may end up being canceled if it doesn't shape up this one last time.

Lockheed Martin Corp's Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) program may be discontinued if the next round of testing this summer does not go well, a top Air Force official said on Friday.

"I think that if this next round of missiles does not perform well, that it will not be positive for the program," David Van Buren, acting assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, told reporters when asked how long the Air Force would maintain funding for the program despite years of technical problems.

He said performance on the program had not met the Air Force's expectations and it was essential that the missile perform better on tests scheduled for late summer.

The Air Force's fiscal 2010 budget did not include any funding for production of new missiles under the $5.8 billion JASSM program, although it did include $82.2 million in funding to address reliability issues.

Pentagon officials last week acknowledged continuing technical issues with the missile, but said they decided to continue the program based on military need.

The program had a troubled history in development also. After some failures in test development, the program was pencil whipped good-to-go for full rate production. The USAF now has hundreds of these missiles in storage. Each costs around $400,000-$500,000 dollars U.S.

Add in the fix-it work and you have a seriously gold plated dud war shot.

A few years ago, Australia selected JASSM for it's future air launched cruise missile capability. It will be interesting to see Defence spin this one given the fact that they are sure to have a watching brief on the missiles troubled development, and troubled history soon after entering full rate production.

THIS IS NO WAY TO REFRESH THE CARRIER AIR WING

Unlike the F-35, the Super Hornet is figured out. Yet the USN does the taxpayer a great disservice by not spinning up a multi-year buy for the F-18E/F Super Hornet.

As the chart below shows from the USN 2010 budget, buying these things in single digit numbers takes the taxpayer to the cleaners. I give you, a carrier jet that costs $118 million each, the Super Hornet E and F.



Click to enlarge.

FOR OLD TIMES SAKE

This kind of poor thinking is going to get interesting fast. Note that the USAF claims a plan with the F-35 P.O. of 1763 F-35s. Since Gates and USAF are saying they can do the job with less, the biggest buyer of the F-35 is now saying they don't need the number to F-35 P.O. plan. This will be yet one more weight around the neck of the people trying to keep the price of the F-35 down by purchase of quantity.

It gets funny here. In five years, the USAF will have a nice batch of F-35 mistake jets because we are buying them with so little flight test discovery on the books. These quotes below demand lots of red ink to correct the false assumptions.

The Defense Department will buy 2,443 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that will be spread across the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. In the next five years, the Air Force plans to get “350 or in that neighborhood,” Schwartz said.

But in the fiscal 2010 budget, the Air Force will get three fewer planes than originally planned. Though the buy for the F-35 went up by a few planes, the Air Force will receive only 10. Eventually, the Defense Department wants maker Lockheed Martin to produce “not less than 80 per year when we hit full-rate production,” Schwartz said.

Donley and Schwartz, though, wouldn’t say where the F-35s would be stationed. The first F-35s will go to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., to be tested.

The discussion over the future of the American fighter is far from over, though. Both leaders said Gates asked them to start the pursuit of a sixth-generation fighter

.

Ending with the sixth generation fighter blue-sky marketing fantasy that will include a sixth-generation price. The F-35 is going to get hurt. Death spiral. Just one more for old times sake.

THE NAVY PLAYS TACAIR CHICKEN WITH CONGRESS

Playing chicken with Congress on the topic of the number of U.S. Navy fighters needed for the carrier could end up with the carrier air wing being composed of less fighters.

This is an easy double-dare on the U.S. Navy. Just go ahead and state you plan to recap to maintain 4 squadrons of fighters per carrier air wing by depending on the arrival of the F-35C. You will lose.

F-22, B-2

The F-22 and B-2 exercise together to build their skills...

Guam - Four B-2 Spirit pilots assigned to the 13th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron completed a 24-hour training mission after flying a 10,000-mile roundtrip flight to Alaska as part of the Continuous Bomber Presence here.

The exercise, Polar Lightning, supports Pacific Command and Pacific Air Forces Command theater objectives.

"We provide a presence in the theater for deterrence," said Maj. Todd A. Moenster, 13th EBS B-2 Spirit instructor pilot and Mission Planning Cell executive officer. "We then, in this specific mission, showed the global reach nature of the B-2 in the fact that we can deploy from anywhere in the world and hold any target at risk."

The exercise was twofold for the pilots participating in the training mission: refine tactics and procedures between B-2s and F-22 Raptors as well as give pilots the training of a long-range flight.

"This is really a great exercise," Major Moenster said. "We had four different squadrons taking part in what we call a large-force exercise. The B-2s flew ... to the Alaska Range Complex where we dropped 20 [inert Joint Direct Attack Munitions]. We then took part in the large-force portion of the exercise with F-22s providing escort to the B-2s into a highly defended area by Red Air threats and by surface-to-air missiles, so the overall point of the exercise was to coordinate the B-2s and the F-22s through a low observable integration mission."