“It depends on the risk you’re willing to accept,” Gen. Welsh told reporters this morning, in response to a question from the incomparable Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News. The Air Force has currently had to ground about 33 squadrons, Welsh had already told the audience at an Air Force Associationbreakfast, 12 of them “combat-coded” fighter and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) units. Another seven have been reduced to doing only basic “takeoff and landing” training, although Welsh was optimistic the funds freed up by sequestering federal workers would buy back their readiness – albeit not immediately.Uh. Wow.
“If we have aircraft that would be needed to conduct a no-fly zone, and they haven’t been flying, hopefully we would have time to get them up to speed before we use them,” Welsh told the clustering reporters.
33 squadrons gone whether through combat or financial consideration is still 33 squadrons gone.
If that isn't bad enough the good General goes on to say that he "hopes they would have time to get (the remaining squadrons) up to speed."
That means that even with those type of draconian cuts, the remaining squadrons are not combat capable and would need to build up to deployment. Make no mistake about it, this isn't like a certification for deployment. This is an issue of USAF squadrons not being basically trained to perform their mission sets.
By the Generals own words, we have at least a portion of our active duty USAF that is combat ineffective and mission incapable...unless they have time to get ready. This is probably the most honest, scariest, most worrying statement that I've heard from any of the Service Chiefs.
I've seen waste in the DoD and believe that weapons systems are being bought that aren't justified (see previous post about the MV-22 vs. MH-60) but this shows me that Sequestration has gone from being an abstraction to an actual threat to national security. We have got to get it fixed.
It is a big deal for USAF. The general rule of the thumb is if you ground a squadron for one month it will take one month to get them back up and certified. It gets worse the longer you ground a squadron. Taking off and landing is a possible capability but so much more on the monthly training schedule are perishable skills. Add to that, reduced flying hours that are below the accepted norm. So yes, USAF has lost a significant amount of combat capability and this throws the one piece of doctrine that has worked for some time now Air Expeditionary Force or "AEF" into disarray. AEF is how you plan which unit is spooling up for deployment, which is deployed and how much dwell time you give a unit before they go into the pre-deployment mode again. Any new hotspots/contingencies are going to be an even bigger stress. Lots of uncertainty and I sure do not know where this will all end up given we are close to $17T in federal debt. I see one possibility of some or all of those "temporary" squadron groundings...never coming back into service.
ReplyDeleteSo what the Air Force is saying is we can't find a way to fund ourselves with the same amount of money we had last year.
ReplyDeleteWhat the Air Force is saying is that Congress has written the law in such a way that it FORCES them to cut money from essential things like flying hours. The Air Force has very little control over where they're allowed to make the cuts.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I've heard that our pilots have had their flying hours cut nearly in HALF, and are now flying about the same amount of time as the CHINESE do per year. ARE YOU FLIPPING KIDDING ME?!?!?!?