Oil prices reshape how Air Force flies, trains

[CommunityEditor]

When the Air Force leadership met in June, the top agenda item was how to make the service more fuel-efficient, a drive that will change how the world’s leading user of fossil fuels flies, trains and even fights.

“At the end of the day, we’re about getting the mission done,” Gen. Michael Moseley, then the service’s chief of staff, said during the conference at Scott Air Force Base, Ill. “But jet fuel is $162 a barrel and going up, so we’ve got to be smarter about how we do it.”

The soaring price of oil is a big deal for an organization that spends some $13 billion annually to power its force. As a rule of thumb, each 1 percent increase in jet fuel prices costs the service $23 million a year.

For comparison’s sake, the Air Force consumes as much fuel as United, American and Delta airlines combined. The largest chunk — 42 percent — is burned by hundreds of transport and tanker planes. The service’s transport arm, the Air Mobility Command, uses $6 billion in fuel each year, more than United.

Newer planes would be more fuel-efficient, but today’s Air Force is running older planes for much longer than anticipated, with only cloudy replacement plans.

“Guys, we’re on an oil platform that’s on fire in the middle of a hurricane,” one four-star general told his counterparts at the leadership conference.

So the Air Force must change, spend less time flying, and get the job done by being smarter. The service has enlisted help from United, seeking tips from an industry that is also working to cut operating costs.

The initiative is part of the Air Force Smart Operations 21 efficiency effort launched by Moseley and former Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne. Both officials were fired last month in the wake of a nuclear security scandal.

The key to the initiative, according to top leaders, is “management by fact” rather than “lore,” and a rule that says, “what gets measured, gets managed.”

For starters, the service plans to change the way airlifters hopscotch around the country to pick up aircrews and equipment before starting a mission. At the Illinois meeting, a four-star general quipped it would be cheaper to fly the aircrews around the country on commercial aircraft in first class than fly four-engine transport planes to meet them. Instead of launching a plane from Charleston, S.C., and moving it to several bases to pick up crew and equipment before loading cargo at Fort Bragg, N.C., Air Mobility Command (AMC) will send the airplane directly to the Army base where it will be joined by all the aircrew and gear it needs. This will also save wear and tear on aging airplanes.

In some cases, Air Force personnel will buy airline tickets in order to meet their aircraft. That’s going to take a cultural shift.

“There’s some sense of ‘don’t tell me I have to use commercial air,’ ” Wynne said in an interview. “You’re going to have to get off of that.”

New mission-planning systems will help AMC plot the most fuel-efficient way to do business. Better planning can tailor arrivals and departures, as more efficient diplomatic clearances can avoid gas wasted flying around denied airspace. AMC will spend about $17 million on a project to more efficiently plan KC-10 tanker flights. The project should help the command save more than $240 million in fuel. A similar project is slated for the KC-135 tanker fleet.

Another way to reduce fuel use is to reduce the weight being flown aboard by Air Force planes. An Illinois Air National Guard KC-135 squadron stripped some 1,200 pounds of gear from its planes, including parachutes and spare life rafts that have never seen use in the planes’ half-century of operations. AMC officials have decreed that the entire KC-135 fleet will follow that lead, and are now eyeing similar efforts for other aircraft types.

Taking a cue from United, the Air Force plans to fly planes with less gas aboard them, saving weight and boosting gas mileage. Planes will carry enough fuel to get them to their destinations, plus a suitable safety margin.

“We have stripped a huge amount of weight out of the airplanes by simply tailoring for the mission,” Wynne said in an interview. “We used to just fill it all the way up.”

“Filling up would also cause us to land heavy on our equipment, causing us to damage our aircraft. It needs to be holistically looked at. It could save them 10 percent of their fuel usage. It would be $600 million annually.”

Savings on the ground
There are ways to save fuel on the ground as well, including taxiing with just one engine, reducing the use of fuel-guzzling auxiliary power units, delaying engine starts until just before taxiing, and loading cargo toward the rear of the plane.

Maintenance can help improve fuel efficiency; for example, tuning flight controls and regularly washing engine compressors to remove soot and grime. The fuel efficiency of each aircraft is being tracked so that “high burn” aircraft can be identified and fixed.

Then there are training changes. C-17 transport pilots are certified on their planes after 70 hours in a high-fidelity simulator and only four hours in the cockpit of the real plane. The key is sophisticated full motion simulators that can effectively substitute for the real thing. Officials with the Air Education and Training Command are assessing whether other aircraft types can do as well.

Even fighter training may change. The complexities of air combat mean fighter pilots need more air time. Still, the ratio of real flight training and simulator training will shift toward more time on the ground. One Air Force four-star general suggested that pilots bound to fly the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter may log 35 hours in trainers and 35 hours in the cockpit before they’re qualified on the jet.


Article: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/20...prices_071308/
Video: http://www.defensenewstv.com/

I'm a fighter aircraft crew chief and have been for 10 years now. One thing that has always made me angry is to see fighters start up and just sit on the ground for 30 minutes or more just waiting for who-knows-what. Waiting on the ground for INS or GPS systems to align is necessarry but once all that is done they should be taxiing out for take off. Figure a 10-ship F-16 sortie, how much fuel do they waste just sitting on the ground because they started too soon? If the Air Force wants to save money on fuel then that is one place to look.

There's no doubt that this is the greatest Air Force that the world has ever known, we can basically kick any bodies butt. So the question is, in time of highly sophisticated flight simulators, why do we have to fly so much. I'm especially talking about fighter aircraft, the Air Force flies fly day, night and weekends at all hours of the day. You have to ask yourself, if fuel prices are so high how can our adversaries fly that much? If you've been in the Air Force for awile you probably figured out that they probably don't. Heck even our allies shut down at the end of the day (been to a few bases) the only time they fly as much as we do is when they are exercising with us (they don't like it I've asked). So how the to answer the question well you could answer it by saying we don't need to. If higher ups could come up with a plan to cut yearly flying hours to about 1/4 or whatever it takes, millions would be saved and we would still be able to kick butt. So the real question would be, can we do it or would we do it...

Like I said, I'm just a simple maintainer, but every time someone has suggested cutting flying hours Ops lost their marbles. I think AF Times even had an article about that last year.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Like I said, I'm just a simple maintainer, but every time someone has suggested cutting flying hours Ops lost their marbles. I think AF Times even had an article about that last year.

That's because unlike most people, Ops is untrainable and has to do the same thing over and over and over. Remember, a maintainer is educated, but an operator is trained...hmm isn't that what we do with circus animals???

[eriddler]

Originally Posted by Air Force monger

There's no doubt that this is the greatest Air Force that the world has ever known, we can basically kick any bodies butt. So the question is, in time of highly sophisticated flight simulators, why do we have to fly so much. I'm especially talking about fighter aircraft, the Air Force flies fly day, night and weekends at all hours of the day. You have to ask yourself, if fuel prices are so high how can our adversaries fly that much? If you've been in the Air Force for awile you probably figured out that they probably don't. Heck even our allies shut down at the end of the day (been to a few bases) the only time they fly as much as we do is when they are exercising with us (they don't like it I've asked). So how the to answer the question well you could answer it by saying we don't need to. If higher ups could come up with a plan to cut yearly flying hours to about 1/4 or whatever it takes, millions would be saved and we would still be able to kick butt. So the real question would be, can we do it or would we do it...

I'm going to jump in here and post a rebuttal. First, ACC has already curtailed hours for flying squadrons which means some aircrew are flying the minimum required to stay combat mission ready. That doesn't even include aircrew that are only flying at basic mission rates (which requires spin-up training for a deployment ~30 days). Second, the reason WHY we do kick butt is because we fly to include flying at night. That experience/capability alone is above and beyond most other Air Forces of the world. Also, safety would suffer due to lower flying hours. Simulators work great for heavy aircraft, but don't go far enough to replicate real world issues (G forces, actual flight stress, etc) that affect other aircraft such as fighter and bomber platforms.

For the crew chief that posted about fighters waiting on the ground for 30 minutes, I'm surprised at your lack of knowledge. First, you are correct in assuming that INS systems have to align and GPS has to acquire satellites. Also, the multiple checks for flight controls, DEECs, radar, etc can take time. The SNIPER pod itself takes roughly ~12 minutes to test itself, during which time the aircraft CANNOT taxi. Programming the route for the ingress/egress, getting radios set up, and other assorted mission items into the jet also takes time. I won't even mention the fact that fighters employ as two or four ship elements and thus have to wait for the other jets to complete their own actions and/or deal with redballs.

Aircrew do not knowingly try to waste fuel or keep crew chiefs waiting. I would personally taxi to EOR before keeping a chief standing in the sun while we wait for the other jets to get ready.

For the unregistered poster, feel free to make it personal. I may be trained but I'm also educated and not a 'circus animal'. I respect maintainers and understand the difficulty of their job. What I've seen at times is a certain percentage of the Air Force doesn't understand the difficulty of our job. We don't just "kick the tires and light the fires", to just come back and sit around for the rest of the day.

[Kegler]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

That's because unlike most people, Ops is untrainable and has to do the same thing over and over and over. Remember, a maintainer is educated, but an operator is trained...hmm isn't that what we do with circus animals???

I just love unregistered morons. I can reply to this with an EDUCATED answer as I spent many years on the flight line as a pointy head and now have spent quite a few years in a flight suit. All as enlisted. If the unregistered is only educated....please please stay away from the plane I am flying on. As they have only been educated on the aircraft and know only the theories. They have no practical application or training because the do not know they have OJT (T stands for training Unregistered) records and have not yet been trained on their job. Obviously unregistered does not know the difference between education and training....so let me enlighten. What would you rather do...send your 16 yr old daughter to sex EDUCATION or sex TRAINING. And to the circus comment.....sure....but we also need circus clowns, as you have shown you are.

Back on subject. No matter how good our simulators are they never exactly duplicate the actual aircraft. We can do alot in the sim...but nothing completely replaces doing the job in the air. We have cut hours to where we are flying our mins as it is.

[smarg]

This is actually good news as it simplifies our problem.

Cut the all fighter wings' hours in half (fighters can't hunt and kill insurgents burying IEDs), and increase use of UAVs. Fuel money and American lives saved.

Now, why can't some enterprising A3 staffers get great bullets as well as actually do some good for their service on this?

[Gunner007]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

That's because unlike most people, Ops is untrainable and has to do the same thing over and over and over. Remember, a maintainer is educated, but an operator is trained...hmm isn't that what we do with circus animals???

I'm a flyer and i have to admit i am LMAO over this one! I am not agreeing with you but i am laughing.

[Gunner007]

My POV, we have so many needless frickin currencies to keep current on we cant afford to cut hours. We maintain currencies for stuff we never do and some things we rarely do. We spend more time practicing aerial refueling than terminal area tactics, or so it seems to me. I think if we cut maybe a third of our currencies and extended the time between events (30 days to something like 60 or 90 days) then we could afford to go longer between sorties. That would be experienced based. Newer guys would need to fly more than guys who have done something hundreds or thousands of times providing the event was not something that requried fine "motor" skill ability. ie,lets say throwing a ladder out of a helicopter isnt something i need to practice ever 30 days, in this case we could change the currency to say 120 days. I am using that as an example and the days dont reflect the actual requirement but to prove my point. there are some things we could extend out and still be safe at doing our jobs. Landing on boats as an USAF guy is ludicrous to have as a currency! Yet some units have this requirement! Inserting PJs by parachute is another one, C-130's do this, never in combat AOR have i seen helo's para drop PJ's, yet we have a currency. I could go on all day... If we eliminated things we dont do and would have nex to no chance of ever practically employing we could save hundreds of hours maybe thousands of hours a year USAF wide on fuel cost for training. Have we curtailed it? NO, we actually just decided to start retraining people on several of these events i mentioned and a few others that we have'nt trained for in a year or more simply because we might, might someday be able to use this skill. LOL Yeah, sure, whatever helps someone get a 5 on a EPR or a step promotion!