SCARCE FLYING HOURS

USAF photo by A1C Chad Strohmeyer Desperate to save money, USAF will cut 10 percent from its flying hours program this year.

By Marc V. Schanz, Associate Editor

aced with the double blow domestic combat air patrols over US testing and intelligence gathering. No F of rising costs and stagnant cities. Noble Eagle had been financed platform in the combat fleet is getting funding, today’s Air Force is looking for through wartime supplementals. an increase in hours. savings everywhere, and that includes began slash- Air Force leadership is far from some areas that traditionally have been ing its training flights that same year. comfortable with the situation and is off-limits to budget-cutters. Likewise, Pacific Air Forces cut flight squeezing dollars where they can find The best example is the Air Force training by about 9,000 hours in 2005, them for flying hours. As of December, flying hour budget—the funding used shaving its bill by $50 million, about the Air Staff was pushing to bring back to pay for live flight training. This nine percent of its flying budget. Others up the flight hours for the 2009 fiscal particular pot of money had long been followed suit. year, indicating that funds would be held sacrosanct and nearly untouchable. Now, the Fiscal 2008 budget is set- shifted out of some military construc- However, even flying hours are being ting a risky precedent. The spending tion projects. However, the flying hour scaled back. blueprint calls for cutting overall flying program for 2010 and beyond remains In 2005, the Pentagon told USAF hours by 10 percent across the board. in question. it must use service funds, rather than According to Air Force leaders aren’t happy about separate DOD allocations, to pay for officials, decreased flying hours are all of this. Operation Noble Eagle, the post 9/11 forecasted for all missions except “We have continued to dumb down 40 AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2008 the standard until we’ve reached a that’s not configured the same as what’s types. The majority of the flying hours point where we are not producing the on the flight line.” came out of the command’s budget, sorties,” Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Today, only a few platforms have but about 60,000 hours were flown USAF Chief of Staff, told a House hardware and software deemed good under the category of “contingency panel this year. “Nor are we producing enough to substitute for actual training flights”—meaning operations in Iraq the total combat preparation that I’m sorties. As of October, ACC could pro- or . comfortable with.” vide this level of simulation to only the A portion of the “contingency” flying Service leaders are uneasy about pilots of its E-3 AWACS, F-15 fighter, hours come out of the ACC training the effect of these cuts. Less time in and Block 50 F-16 fighter. budget, with the remainder funded by the air has been a contributor to the Still, those few simulators provide a supplementals. In 2007, only 12,000 decline of readiness levels in recent great deal of capability. Currently, 25 of the Air Force’s 60,000 contingency years, they note. percent of AWACS crew hours are be- flying hours were funded by war supple- As flight hours decline, the combat ing “flown” in simulators. F-15 pilots mentals. air forces are increasingly relying for can accumulate as much as 20 percent Future budgets remain tight. Starting their aircrew training on high-fidelity of their required training sorties in in 2008, the service has 261,348 flight simulators. Modern simulators are a simulators. hours on the books for the combat fleet. powerful training tool, said Col. Eric Going forward through 2013, the budget H. Best, head of the flight operations Hi-Tech Simulators will fluctuate but not by much - with division at Air Combat Command, The capability of some modern an average of 260,000 hours a year. In Langley AFB, Va. However, he added, simulators makes possible the execu- December, however, Air Staff officials they are no cure-all. tion of even highly challenging train- indicated they would be rolling back Lt. Gen. Raymond E. Johns Jr., the Air ing scenarios. “I can do things in a cuts to the FY 2009 flying hour program Force’s deputy chief of staff for strategic simulated environment that I’ve never but gave no specifics on recapturing plans and programs, reports that recent done in almost 4,000 hours in an F-16,” flight hours in the out years. flying hour cuts have degraded the abil- Best said. Overseas rotations take a toll on ity of some aircrews to drop weapons, Still, there are limits. “I can’t simu- overall readiness. When a squadron and the service needs to find a way to late what it’s like to take off when the is slated for a predeployment training get the hours back up in the budgets weather is near zero on a mission,” cycle, pilots perform their buildup to for Fiscal 2009 and 2010. said Best. “I can’t simulate when you get ready for the specific missions they Moreover, the simulator can never start hearing weird noises and looking are expected to perform when they fully reproduce the so-called “wow at gauges doing strange things.” For deploy. Deployment spin-up train- factor” produced by the launch of a those situations, nothing can match ing is “just a subset of capabilities,” live weapon. In combat, Johns noted, the actual flight experience. Best said—preparation for what the pilots “don’t have time for a ‘wow fac- To help map out its yearly flight regi- aircrews will need over Iraq or Af- SCARCE FLYING HOURS tor,’ ” because they are too busy flying men, ACC produces a single Air Force ghanistan. and fighting. flying model that takes into account air- Best, a former operations group Another problem: High-fidelity crew experience level, type of aircraft, commander at the 8th Fighter Wing, simulators are not available in large and many other factors, and then spits Kunsan AB, South Korea, noted that numbers. “We are trying to take legacy out the number of yearly flying hours a Korean deployment requires dif- systems and turn them into high-fidelity needed for a given platform. ferent mission sets and capabilities systems,” said Best. “It doesn’t do us In 2007, Air Combat Command than what are currently needed over any good to send a guy into a simulator aircraft flew 327,794 hours of all Southwest Asia, where there is no air-

Opposite, an A-10 Thunderbolt fires flares in a combat search and rescue training exercise. Here, SrA. Adam Mirabal gives signals to the pilot of a B-52 as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. USAF photo by SSgt. Doug Nicodemus

AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2008 41 Maj. Kent L. Payne of ACC’s flight operations division said deployment management is vital to ensuring proper readiness. “[Before] this calendar year, the B-1 was on a four-month deployment and eight months at home station,” USAF photo by LisaTerry McKeown said Payne, himself a B-1B operator. “Those eight months at home, we were training up on other missions, [but] not getting enough spin-up for going back to theater.” Earlier this year, the B-1B went to a six-month-long deployment cycle, with one year at home station. The extra time in the US helped fill in the training gaps that arose when older, more-experienced crews deployed, leaving behind younger officers who had not completed mission qualifica- tion. Bombers fly fewer but longer train- ing sorties, Payne added, and the First Lt. Joden Werlin, 75th Fighter Squadron, Langley AFB, Va., focuses on the con- extra time at home station is already trols of an A-10 simulator as he prepares to participate in a Virtual Red Flag exercise. paying off—flying hours are more evenly distributed to the airmen who to-air threat or integrated air defense online, USAF wants experienced pilots need them. In a given 20-month Air system to defeat. in place as the Air Force stands up and Space Expeditionary Force (AEF) In the four months before a unit squadrons in Alaska, Hawaii, and New cycle, a less-experienced B-1 pilot leaves, commanders will look at what Mexico. Starting next year, however, the needs at least 80 training sorties in the the unit will be tasked to do, and the op- program will start admitting pilots fresh air. An experienced pilot only requires erators will train to those missions—at out of training, which will complicate 60 sorties. the expense of everything else. the equation. Highly tasked assets, such as the When this happens, other skills “I’m sure we’ll learn a few things,” A-10 , confront major atrophy. “We accept risk in some of Best said. training challenges on two fronts—co- those missions; we know there is go- Working training into the rotations ordinating home station training with ing to be some spin-up time before of in-demand combat aircraft—such deployments and making sure main- we can execute,” Best pointed out. as bombers and close air support fight- tainers can provide healthy aircraft Commanders are forced “to make ers—takes even greater care and atten- for training. “We are going to two hard choices.” tion to detail. theaters,” Iraq and Afghanistan, on Getting units back up to mandated readiness levels takes close adherence to a building block approach that closely monitors which missions and skills are needed imminently. “It’s something we are good at, but it takes a conscientious management of those programs,” said one Air Force officer. USAF photo by SrA. Donald ActonL. Eye on the Prize Meticulous management is particu- larly important for fleets that consist of very old aircraft such as the B-52, or that have limited availability, such as the B-2. ACC planners keep their eyes on factors such as cost per flying hour, maintenance man-hours per flying hour, mission capable rates, and utilization rates to ensure platforms and their crews are properly funded. With the F-22 program, pilots are tightly managed and previously quali- F-16s on the flight line at Duluth Arpt., Minn. These F-16s are assigned to the 148th fied. With new Raptor units coming Fighter Wing “Bulldogs.” 42 AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2008 ing their minimum training levels. One hundred percent manning helps spread resources “across the right population,” Best said. “I get better distribution across my aircrews; I get better currency.” But shedding manpower is tricky. When flying units cut personnel to

USAF photo by R.H. Capt.Tana Stevenson correct overmanning, the first to go are the more experienced fliers—who are useful in other assignments—to make room for pilots coming out of flight training. The “brand-new beans” to the system now have to go through the training program quicker to close the experi- ence gap, Best said. Pilots with 300 or 400 hours on a given airframe are replaced with pilots who may have 70 hours—and more training hours are required for these new pilots than for experienced operators. F-15s lined up on the flight line await a Red Flag Alaska mission at Eielson AFB, If not managed correctly, this shift in Alaska. six-month deployments, said Maj. George Stanley, the ACC flight opera- tions division section chief for A-10 training. Fighter crews fly more and shorter sorties than do their bomber counter- parts. For A-10 pilots, the minimum

sortie requirement in an AEF cycle for USAF photo by SSgt. Samuel Rogers a less-experienced flier is about 180 sorties, with more experienced pilots needing 160 flights. When the A-10s return from deploy- ments, they have a large assignment portfolio, but no longer have priority for parts, such as targeting pods and other equipment. Furthermore, there are only four deployable active duty units.

National Guard to the Fore If an A-10 unit deploys 12 of its aircraft, for example, those aircraft need 100 percent manning to support Capt. Matt Buckner, 71st Fighter Squadron, flies an F-15 on a combat air patrol mis- the mission, Stanley said. As a result, sion over Washington, D.C., as part of Operation Noble Eagle. home-station training must be scaled back, since a squadron cannot gener- nagging funding shortage. Earlier this experience levels can affect the quality ate the sortie rate without an adequate year, Moseley directed that fighter and of training, Best added. number of maintainers. bomber units no longer be deliberately In the coming years, Air Combat Fortunately, the overmanned—a change greeted with Command’s flight operations office at is able to assist with the A-10 mission. relief at Best’s office. Langley will exert more authority over Just this fall, ANG units from Maryland When a squadron is overmanned, USAF’s training portfolio, fleetwide, and Michigan were deployed to the US the flying hours requirement goes up in an attempt to get the force in line Central Command region with their along with the manning level. “If I with requirements. recently upgraded A-10Cs, helping have 125 percent ... manning, then my Beginning in this year, ACC’s flight to spread the training and deployment requirements for hours are 25 percent operations division is tackling US Air burden while putting the most capable greater,” Best said. The change is “go- Forces in Europe and Pacific Air Forces aircraft in the combat zones. ing to help with my sortie generation flying hour planning as well. The hope ACC’s flight operations division requirement.” is that consolidated planning will help has been searching for solutions to the There was no excess capacity to go equalize the flying hours across the around. Not all aircrews were meet- combat fleet. ■ AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2008 43