Photo: Boeing photo
Navy Grounds Top Guns -- Dave Majumdar, Daily Beast
The F/A-18s needs spare parts and in too many cases they’re being taken from brand new jets. This is a risk to national security and pilots’ lives.
The U.S. Navy’s elite cadre of fighter pilots—made famous by Top Gun—are not flying nearly often as they would like. Instead, many of the Navy’s elite Boeing F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter squadrons are sitting on the ground with only two or three flyable jets available. The rest of the jets are awaiting maintenance for want of critical spare parts—and some of those parts are being cannibalized from brand new jets in an increasingly vain attempt to keep squadrons flying.
“It’s pretty bad, ” said one veteran F/A-18 fighter pilot. “Some squadrons have found it difficult to keep more than a few jets up, while other squadrons are spending a tremendous amount of operational time away from home base, creating what Air Boss has called ‘the haves and the have nots.’”
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My Comment: And with more budget sequestration cuts in the pipeline .... this crisis in the US Navy's fleet of aircraft is only going to get worse.
1 comment:
Entitlement spending cannot be cut.
Entitlements can only monotonically increase. You have to buy votes with taxpayer money.
At some point this is going to squeeze the defense budget out of existence ...
AND THE LAST GENERAL WILL TURN OUT THE LIGHTS.
Generals have to be political. they have to speak their mind while in office.
Yes they have to carry out orders. Yes they can;t be strident and take to the airwaves 24/7.
But if they do not call a spade a spade, they will lead ill equipped men and women to disaster or they will be in command of nothing.
Either way they are not fulfilling their duty to protect.
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