The Air Force Can’t Seem to Keep Its Planes in the Air

Last Wednesday, an emergency landing is the third incident involving the US Air Force Air Force since the beginning of the year.

Just over a year after Rockwell B-1B Lancer collapsed While trying to land on the Ellsworth Air Force Base (AFB), South Dakota-result in the overall loss of strategic bombarder-stratoformatrass Boeing B-52 was forced to make urgent landing in offett AfB, Nebraska.

US Air Force confirmed that B-52h from Bartele AFB, Louisiana, “landed without an incident” in offett after emergency. The service did not describe the nature of the emergency room, except stating that the Cold War-Call Sign Skull31- “was four hours in a training flight … when he experienced indefinite” system problems “,” Grand Island independent reported.

Bomber was in routine training when he had problems and was diverted to offett. It was undamaged and the crew did not suffer injuries. However, the incident came only a few hours before Deadly decline In Washington, DC, where the US Army UH-60 Blackhawk collided with the American Airlines Jetliner. Sixty -seven people were killed, making it the most deadly air accident in at least 15 years.

War Air Force to a rocky start?

This is the third incident that includes the US Air Force Air Force since the beginning of the year. The following is an accident at the Kadena Air Base in Japan, in the first half of January, when the air-super-superheed fighter for Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor Raptor was forced make an urgent landing. Just a week later, Lockheed Martin F-35A Lighting II Conventional Stirring and Landing (CTOL) Multirole Fifth Generation Airplane suffered “a malfunction on a flyer” in Eielson Afb in Alaska, crashing to the ground and exploding.

That last accident happened just the day before the deadly DC. Fortunately, both US pilots survived the accidents. However, the F-35 aircraft was forced to throw out, after which he was taken to a nearby hospital for observation.

It is also only last May that the F-35B-short departure and vertical landing variants of a common strike fighter with a banged near Albuquerque, New Mexico, during flight before delivery from Fort Worth to Edwards AFB, destroying $ 135 million in aircraft. Fortunately, this pilot also survived.

With last week’s incident, a dozen F-35 was completely destroyed after the flight accident. The remaining F-35 or were returned to a service or renewed to use maintenance training and ground crews.

Called into question the reliability of bombers

All these recent military aviation accidents were put into account by how few aircraft were actually in the service. US Air Force has 183 F-22 Raptors In his fleet, While the US army is currently Maintains about 630 F-35S. This last number may seem significant, but it took more than a decade to reach that figure. On the other hand, each of these aircraft has a price of $ 80 million or more, which means that the fall last month was expensive.

The situation with US Air Force Bomber Fleet is worse, because it’s just less than 200 currently in work.

There were times when the number of bombers in service exceeded the current F-35 fleet.

In fact, between 1952 and 1962, total 744 B-52 was manufactured. However, only 76 honorable old aircraft is still in service, including those in reserve, if any damaged or otherwise considered that they are no longer air. For these reasons, the loss of one would not be a serious blow. But as production ended more than 50 years ago, replacement of one of Zero is simply not possible.

Moreover, the B-52 are what the service has the most, because even less B-1 Lancer and Northrop B-2 Spirit of the bombers are now flying. In the case of former, 100 was built and only 45 is still in function – with about ten and a half Currently maintained “In the return state” in the famous “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (AFB), Arizona. This effort recently paid off, after B-1B called “Lancelot” was pulled out of a pension to replace B-1 Lancer damaged outside the repair after suffering an engine accident during an otherwise “routine” maintenance in Dyess AFB in Texas in April 2022. Another aircraft – called “anger” – was also resurrected.

There are no easy replacements

The aviation has yet to announce whether the third retired bomber can be returned to the service to replace the B-1 that collapsed at Ellsworth last year. Efforts are also made to upgrade the rest of the fleet.

Although there are opportunities for replacing B-52 and B-1 that suffer such a catastrophic accident, the same is not for B-2-because only 20, together with one prototype, was built. Two were lost, which resulted in the most expensive air accidents to this day. Each aircraft is appreciated at about $ 1.4 billionand the service can afford another expensive accident.

All of this helps to explain why US air forces were persuaded not to cut your order Briefly for Northrop Grumman B-21 Attacker. Since the aircraft will replace both B-1 and B-2, the service will need to ensure that it is a bomber needs and that one accident or accident does not become a fully fulfilled disaster.

About the author: Peter Sucia

Peter Sucia is a writer based in Michigan. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites with over 3,200 published works over twenty years of career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearm history, cyber security, politics and international affairs. Peter is also a Writer for Forbes and Cleaning jobs. You can follow it on Twitter: @Pepersuciu. You can send the author to the e -after: [email protected].

Picture: Wikimedia Commons.