It takes Congress to get a change in the industry?

Perusing the August 3 issue of Aviation Week, there's an article "Meeting Hire Standards" by Frances Fiorino regarding the legislative fallout from the February crash of Colgan 3407. The provisions of the Airline Safety and Pilot Training Act of 2009 are expansive, but there are three areas that catch my interest.

First, an increase in flight time hiring requirements- all pilots (be they captains or first officers) must hold an ATP and have a minimum of 1500 flight hours. Current rules according to the article (and what I have heard from many in the industry) are a commercial pilot license and a minimum of 250 hours. Some regional airlines even have programs where the pilot pays the airline to fly and build up hours. Well, if that doesn't make me drop a load in my shorts out of fear.

As the successful ditching of the US Airways flight in the Hudson showed, there's no substitute for an experienced crew in the two seats up front when it hits the fan. There's an old saying in aviation that pilots start out with a full bag of luck and an empty bag of experience and the goal is to fill the bag of experience before emptying the bag of luck. I don't know about you folks, I'd like the guy with the biggest bag of experience up front. And if that means their pay has to be higher and that gets passed to the consumer, then so be it. Routine flight is easy. I've even got a few hours under my belt in general aviation aircraft. But I found that was tested the most by my instructor during simulated emergencies. That's where skill and experience come into play.

The second area of interest regards a more serious push towards addressing fatigue. It's been a contributing cause in some many accidents and it's been on the NTSB's most wanted list since 1990. That's NINETEEN YEARS AGO. NINETEEN! And now we're just getting around to seeing it as an important issue. I'd love to and fish through the accident databases just for the United States for all accidents since 1990 where fatigue as a factor.

I don't think there's a regional pilot in the United States that doesn't have a story about flying while tired. There are even regional airlines that operate under the name of big carriers that have in the past wanted their crews to stay overnight in the planes and rest there for the next duty day!

I once was talking about the ramifications of Colgan 3407 to a regional jet pilot and he put it plainly- "Now that the majors aren't hiring, many of us are now stuck here in the regionals. Before you put up with it because in a few years you moved up to the mainline and had a good life. Now a lot of us see flying for the regionals as our long term career and we're going to want a better lifestyle if that's the case."

The last item of the Airline Safety and Pilot Training Improvement Act that got my attention was a provision for a "truth in advertising" mandate that the airline clearly disclose which regional airline is operating each leg of a flight, be it mainline or otherwise. Personally I like this idea. There are regional operations that I absolutely avoid and as it is now, I have to ask around the regional pilots I know who operates a given flight for a given carrier before I'm comfortable booking the flight. If I can't find out and there's a chance I'll get that particular regional airline, I don't care how cheap the flight is, I'm taking my business where I can get that solid answer on who is operating that flight.

We've all heard the story of the 47 passengers stuck on a Continental Express flight that diverted to Rochester, Minnesota. Initially, queries to Continental were referred to the operator of the flight, ExpressJet. Whatever happened to brand integrity? If ExpressJet is flying with your name and logo, then you have some responsibility for what happens on your regional partners.

And don't get me started on code shares.

DOH!

I was browsing the Key Publishing aviation forum last night and came across this gem of an account from a former USAF F-104 weapons instructor about a DACT engagement between the F-15 and the F-104 back in the 1970s:

When the F-15 training operation began at Luke in the latter 70s, the initial squadron was the 555th, known as 'the Nickle'. Sometime in 78 or so, the Nickle guys were looking for DACT with a variety of fighter types, and so they came down the street to the F-104 Fighter Weapons School in the 69TFTS, also at Luke.

They wanted to fly against us, and so we agreed to put up a two ship for a trial mission. Two FWS instructors were selected, one a German instructor (Hartmut Troehler) and one USAF instructor (me).

The Nickle hosted the mission. We briefed at their squadron with two of their instructors (both F-4 FWS grads). They were going to use the two seat model for the engagement. We would both have dedicated GCI. We were to simulate Floggers...not a bad idea since the G model that we flew was a good representation of the A2A capability of the MiG-23. Our simulated armament was to be Apex, Aphid, and the gun.

After the main briefing, Hartmut and I had our own briefing. I was the flight lead and intended to use as much deception as I could. We knew that the F-15 guys were really proud of their radar capabilities...the PD radar was new to the fighter community at that time. I thought that the two Nickle guys would be heavily relying on their radar to enter the fight...as it turned out, I was right.

My plan was to put Hartmut in close formation and run head on at the F-15 using GCI for vectoring. Our radar could search out to 40nm but we couldn't lock on until 20nm.

We took the first GCI vector and accelerated through the mach. Intended to fight fast...high speed extensions and hook turns. At 20nm, the F-15 made a large blip on my radar and I was able to get a lock. The plan was to Fox-1 at about 16nm and then have Hartmut peel off into a hard 360 to follow me.

I called the Apex at 16nm, told Hartmut to deploy, and then pushed it up to over 700KIAS. My hope was that the Eagle guys would hold their lock on me and not see Hartmut separate. We could slave our gunsight to the radar lock on angle...this let me fly right at the F-15. I picked him up visually...he was high, to the right, and had started a conversion turn. I unloaded, and extended away figuring they would try to follow...and they did.

What that did, of course, was get them sandwiched between me and Hartmut. My guess was that they would get all excited and jump on me without asking where my wingman was. They found out soon enough as their GCI relayed to them Hartmut's gun attack call.

I was looking back and saw their break turn that resulted. I went idle and boards, slowed to .85M, dropped my maneuver flaps, put my lift vector on the Eagle and then pulled the jet into a hard 7g turn using burner to hold my speed. I knew I could sustain that g at around 400KIAS.

I pulled into a lead snapshot position on the Eagle, closed in and went guns. The Eagle broke again as their GCI relayed the second gun call.

By this time, Hartmut was pitching back into the fight. He saw me extend away, went in for his second gun attack, and then extended away after me. I tallyed him, gave him a check turn to put us back into line abreast and then we became a dot.

The Eagle tried to call a Fox-2 as we separated but with us well over 700KIAS, it was way out of parameters.

The result was the two Fox-1s and three unobserved gun kills by us. They had no valid shots.

The debriefing was a hoot. I especially liked the part where the Nickle guy played his recorder and we heard the backseater say "Break, we just got gunned again"!

Of course, all of this should not have happened. The F-15 should have had us for lunch. But they didn't, and it was all because they didn't play to their strengths...and they severely underestimated their opponents. They didn't do that again and that was a good thing.

It looks like the battle was one before the fight began- the two F-104 pilots correctly anticipated what the Eagle drivers would do and they played on the F-104s strengths- speed, small head-on visual signature.

The return of counterinsurgency...it ain't sexy but it can work

Stephen Trimble's DEW Line posted today that Alenia plans to offer the M-346 (basically a Westernized Yak-130) for the USAF's potential order for 100 light attack fighter trainers. The M-346 would be the first pure jet offering to an RFP the USAF issued last week. Of course, the M-346 would also be a potential candidate for the T-38 Talon replacement contract known as T-X.

It's interesting that one one hand the USAF has been making a full court press on fifth generation projects like the F-35 and F-22, but now we have something that can do many things for less cost (training, light attack....dare I say air sovereignty?) being mooted.

In a competition that so far has been full of turboprop aircraft like the Air Tractor AT-802, Embraer Super Tucano, and an armed version of the Beech/Raytheon AT-6 Texan II, this is an interesting offering that might offer cost-savings for the USAF if it's also chosen for the T-X competition. Larger aircraft order, unit cost goes down and the airplane geek in me would be tickled to see an aircraft designed by Italian and Russian engineers in USAF markings.

Does Japan get it? Maybe.

The cover story for the July 27 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology looks at the shift in Japan's power projection strategy and this is an area that I've been interested in as the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are now doing things and discussing things openly that just even several years ago would have been taboo in light of their post-war constitutional provisions regarding their military posture. Two interviews with high-ranking JASDF officers are featured, the first with Lt. General Hidetoshi Hirata, commander of the JASDF's Southwestern Composite Air Division based in Okinawa- it's Lt. Gen. Hirata's forces that are closest to potential threats with the rise in PLAAF capabilities and power projection.

One of the interesting aspects of the interview with Hirata was his non-endorsement of AESA as an upgrade to JASDF F-15J (AESA won't be part of the upgrade for 90 of their Eagles) but endorsement of capabilities that could be part of an AESA package. The following excerpt is from David Fulghum's Ares Defense blog:

“Our next fighters [including the F-X and F-XX] are expected to have a couple of critical capabilities to fulfill their mission,” Hirata says. “Networking and ISR are important in the situations and environments where F-X will be operated. It will need to function…as a node of the ISR network. That’s why the F-X needs good sensors, radar, electronic surveillance and communications.”

It's interesting that he points out a crucial cornerstone of network-centric warfare, the distribution of information to disparate assets. Having an aircraft that can act as a node in an information network makes it a force multiplier for everyone else in that network. It has already been published that AESA offers the capabilities that General Hirata is pointing out- if I'm not mistaken, AESA has shown itself not just to be a tool for detection, surveillance as a traditional radar, but it has also been shown to function as a high-bandwidth datalink, electronic sensor and communications link. These are capabilities that have the Australians jazzed, but I'll post on that at a later date.

Does Japan need F-22s? Maybe. They're a lot more proximately placed to fourth generation threats like the Chengdu J-10B and Shenyang J-11B, have a broad area of aerospace to cover (supercruise would make short work of the distances involved) and having all-aspect LO would give limited JASDF assets survivability in the face of numerically larger numbers.

But with the end of F-22 production, Japan may well be forced to take another approach where the network capabilities of an AESA class package might help offset without necessarily needing all-aspect LO.

Time will tell.

The Air National Guard needs fighters. New fighters? Or just fighters?

I've recently started seeing more discussions regarding the Air National Guard's needs to recapitalize its fighter force. It may have been going on longer but I got interested in it after seeing the debates in Washington regarding the ending of production of the Lockheed F-22A Raptor. Don't get me wrong, I think the Raptor is an awesome piece of kit and a fine aircraft to form the sharp point of the spear of the USAF, but at its going prices and decidedly Cold War origins, I won't be weeping for the end of the Raptor production as it's money better spent in other areas of the USAF, most particularly the need for fighters for the ANG, an issue that came to the forefront after the inflight structural failure of a Missouri ANG F-15C back in 2007.

Just recently Lt. General Henry Wyatt, director of the Air National Guard, told a group of defense reporters that the ANG needs new fighters, without making specific recommendations for specific type. The link will go to the article on the Air Force Times' website, but there were a few items in the article that piqued my interest:

Without endorsing a specific type of fighter for the future, Lt. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt said providing the Air National Guard with the same capabilities as the active Air Force will prevent a repeat of the first Iraq war. At the time, the Guard’s A-7s were sidelined because the active fighter force was flying the newer A-10s, F-15s and F-16s. Things have improved since then, and Guard squadrons are routinely deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.

But if I'm not mistaken, the Navy successfully flew their A-7 Corsairs in Desert Storm. According to the FAS, the Navy's A-7E fleet demonstrated a 95% operational readiness rate during Desert Storm and their effectiveness has been well-documented. I don't necessarily think that the A-7 was an older platform when you consider there were USAF aircraft in theater during Desert Storm that were considerably older than the A-7 (B-52s come to mind right away) and the B-1B did sit out Desert Storm for its own technical reasons and lack of, at least then, conventional weapons capability.

With the next generation of fighters coming online, Wyatt wants to make sure the Guard gets what the active Air Force is getting. It would be a waste of money to stick the Guard with outdated aircraft that can handle its primary mission — homeland protection — but don’t mirror capabilities of the aircraft in the active force, Wyatt said.

Herein lies a paradox in recapitalizing the Air National Guard- General Wyatt states that air sovereignty would be the primary mission of the ANG force, yet in the same breath he wants the same capabilities as the active duty force. Now I'm well aware that a sizeable portion of combat missions overseas are now performed by ANG personnel and aircraft like the F-16 or A-10. But it seems like contradiction to me to ask for the same as the active duty force gets for a primary role that he's even saying older aircraft can handle.

Wyatt said he did not want to enter the debate over whether the Air Force needs more F-22s than the 187 maximum set by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in favor of funding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

But did he not say he wants for the ANG what the active duty force is getting?

“What I’ve tried to convey is the message that I am basically platform-agnostic — I don’t care,” Wyatt said. “I’m interested in the capability and I’m interested in recapitalizing our aging fleet.”

Now we might be seeing glimmers of pragmatism. Being platform-agnostic, as he put it, is a good starting point as advances in electronics have given older platforms new capabilities- just look to the AESA-equipped F-15Cs or what the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet offers with AESA/Growler EW functions. But to say "aging fleet" prompts reinsertion of the General's foot in his mouth. Aging aircraft are an issue across the US military as flight hours are being consumed by the pace of overseas deployment on numerous airframes from the Lockheed P-3 Orion, the Boeing CH-47 Chinook and the Marine's CH-46 Sea Knights. But aging aircraft can still perform roles, after all we have KC-135s still flying that make some of the B-52 Stratofortress fleet look young.

The Air Force is considering options for filling that gap, including service extensions for the F-15 and F-16, but no decisions have been made. If the major overhauls are deemed feasible, the Guard could see 100 to 150 of its F-16s get service extensions, Wyatt said. Studies are being conducted on also overhauling F-15s.

Eighty percent of the F-16 force alone is to be phased out over the next eight years as they are out of airframe hours. And the multirole F-16 is one of the cornerstone aircraft of the ANG fleet and it would be prohibitively expensive to replace the F-16s even at a 1.5 to 1 ratio with F-35s. At least Gen. Wyatt seems to leave the door open that there may be cost-effective options that give the ANG modernized F-16s and possibly F-15s for the fraction of the cost that replacing them with F-35s would entail.

Then there is the cost of not doing anything- letting the ANG decline with having to share aircraft with the active duty force as associate units and letting a significant portion of our national security, and military readiness slowly wither on the vine.