A Few USAF Things

It occurred to me we've not been keeping up our USAF bona fides… so, herewith some newsy notes as supplied by my friends who send me the Air Force Association's Daily Report.  First, an item with semi-local interest (click the pic to see just how beautiful the landscape is to the south of us a ways, and my tongue is only half in my cheek):

Keep On Keeping On: Lockheed Martin says the extended-range version of its stealthy JASSM cruise missile performed well in a recent flight test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., giving it a record of six successes in six flights. In a release Wednesday, the company said a B-1B bomber released the missile, which then flew a preplanned course to collect data and subsequently destroyed the designated target. Randy Bigum, Lockheed's vice president of strike weapons, said this test confirmed the JASSM-ER's "ability to be employed" from the B-1's aft weapons bay and completed collection of data that "may be used to fine-tune navigation algorithms." Flight testing will continue through mid-2010 in preparation for operational testing in 2011. JASSM-ER is expected to be available for combat on the B-1 in early 2013. Its range is more than 500 nautical miles, more twice the reach of the baseline JASSM.

Which all goes to prove that not every USAF acquisition program is in the weeds, contrary to what one might think.  Speaking of which:

McCain Questions KC-X Process: Concerned over
fairness, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called on Defense Secretary Robert Gates to clarify how the Air Force intends to select a tanker aircraft in the KC-X competition, the Mobile Press-Register reported Wednesday. According to the newspaper, McCain wants Gates to justify the Air Force's proposed method for determining the total proposed price of each bidder and how it came up with the requirements that will drive the selection of the winning aircraft. It cites an Oct. 29 letter from McCain to Gates that, among its points, questions whether the method for determining price would favor smaller airframes—seemingly giving Boeing's 767-based tanker an advantage over Northrop Grumman's offering. McCain said in October he would like the Government Accountability Office—or some independent watchdog overseeing the contest. (See also Reuters news wire service's Nov. 10 report.)

Is there anyone naïve enough to believe this clusterfuck… which has been in progress since September of 2001… will proceed smoothly?  I mean, even the damned WTO could get involved here!  In the meantime our warriors are flying tankers that were bought back when Eisenhower was president.  In other words, the average age of the aircraft in the tanker fleet is 47 years old.

Apropos of my last post… wherein I went off on the Ditherer-In-Chief… compare and contrast:

Pay particular attention to the weekly Close Air Support/Armed Recon numbers for OEF.  

This is an admittedly anecdotal piece of information, but I think it serves to illustrate the gravity of the situation in The Af.  What other conclusions could one draw when our weekly CAS sorties increase by a factor of (nearly) FIVE in the space of one year?  We don't fly those sorties just so fighter jocks can get the hours to justify their flight pay.  That said, I have some reservations about the "year to date" totals as reported.  While I don't keep an eagle-eye on this data, I do read it every day as a matter of interest.  The incremental sortie numbers have been increasing significantly, yet the YTD data for 2008 and 2009 are suspiciously close.


(Data courtesy of the aforementioned Daily Report, who obtain it from CENTAF.  Also note we're PC these days... the "war on terrorism" verbiage has been dropped.  I never noticed that until today.)