By Michael Sirak
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany–The Air Force is starting to return F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets to flight duty upon each aircraft passing a one-time inspection, service officials said here yesterday.
The grounding of F-15C Eagles, however, remains in effect, these officials said.
Defense Daily could not ascertain the details of the F-15E inspection by press time.
The Air Force grounded its entire fleet of about 700 F-15s Nov. 3 after the crash the previous day of a Missouri Air National Guard F-15C inside the United States. The pilot, who ejected, suffered some non-life-threatening injuries. The downed jet was built by McDonnell Douglas in 1980, according to the Air Force. Boeing [BA] later subsumed that company.
While the Air Force said the cause of that accident is still under investigation, with the final findings expected to take about 60 days, it said preliminary analysis indicated that a possible structural failure of the aircraft may have occurred. Thus, the grounding of the aircraft is a precautionary measure.
The fleet grounding affected even the frontline unit of F-15Es at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, in U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility (AOR). Those jets have been available only as a last resort since the grounding. Central Air Forces (CENTAF) has been filling coverage gaps since then “with a variety of fighter, attack and bomber aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles.” This has included to date reassigning B-1Bs bombers and repositioning the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower (CVN-69) so that its strike aircraft are closer to Afghanistan.
Lt. Gen. Gary North, CENTAF’s commander, said during a meeting with reporters Nov. 8 at a forward operating base in the AOR he hoped to have the Bagram Strike Eagles return to full-flying status as soon as possible.
“Right now, we are hoping we can rule out certain things which will allow me to be able to put my airplanes in a full-flying schedule as opposed to the ground alert…which I currently have them on,” he said.
“As the accident team and our Air Force Material Command team works through the issue, we are getting daily reports of the findings of the process…to determine how either to find the problem quickly or make a determination of what the problem is not, which will allow us to put the airplanes back up into the air.”
Like the Bagram Strike Eagles, F-15s assigned to North American Aerospace Defense Command have been on ground alert and could fly missions only in an emergency, the Air Force has said.
The Air Force was not alone in grounding its F-15s. Japan, for example, announced the same precautionary measure Nov. 3. Israel, Saudi Arabia also operate F-15s. South Korea has a fleet of new F-15Ks, which South Korean press reports said have not been restricted, and intends to buy more. Singapore also has 24 new F-15s on order.
“When we had the recent incident and the prompt action [to ground the aircraft]…the chief notified me right away so we could take action and notify our international partners,” Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force for International Affairs Bruce Lemkin told reporters Nov. 11 during a meeting at the 2007 Dubai Airshow. “And he, in fact, called the air chiefs of the countries involved.”
Lemkin said the Air Force’s open and frank dialogue on the crash and subsequent investigation with those nations is indicative of the relationship that the service builds with its foreign partners.
“You acquire the same system we have, you’re an extension of the support system, the support network that we have,” he said. “There have been questions and certainly my commitment to our foreign partners that are flying the same aircraft, in this case F-15s, as we know things, as we determine things, we will inform them.”
The F-15 entered service in September 1975. The fleet is bedded down at bases in the continental United States, as well as Alaska and Hawaii, Japan and the United Kingdom. They include F-15 Eagles, mostly C models, used for air superiority and 224 newer multirole F-15Es that can also carry a large load of air-to-ground munitions. The Air Force no longer is buying any F-15s.
While the F-15Es are newer–Bagram’s F-15Es are late 1980s vintage, according to the CENTAF officials–and have some structural reinforcements compared to the Eagles to accommodate for the weight of the weapons, CENTAF officials said the basic airframes are similar enough to have warranted grounding the Strike Eages, too.
“There is an awful lot of commonality between the airplanes, particularly when you get into the skeletons of the airplanes, if you will, the backbone of the airplanes,” said CENTAF’s North. “While the F-15E has got some structural differences and beef ups and changes…a lot of the skeletal portions of the airplane is the same.”
“Based on the data that we had at the time,” he continued, “grounding the entire fleet was prudent because the safety and security of our airmen are one of our collective key jobs.”
North said at the time he did not know how long the Bagram Strike Eagles would be grounded.
“The team…is out there right now investigating, working at this at a very rapid pace because we’d like to get a cause of the accident determined and then to be able to get the airplanes flying,” he said.
“As the investigative team comes up with things to look at, they go back and they study the depot maintenance records of the accident airplane,” he continued. “They look at traditional areas which may be problem areas in the airplane. And so what I am doing with my airplanes right now…[is] looking at every airplane and looking at all phased maintenance for any indicators that will parallel or track some of the issues that we may find with the accident airplane.”
The F-15E is currently the only aircraft in the Air Force’s inventory cleared to drop the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb, a 250-pound-class, satellite-guidance-aided munition.
But North said this is not a concern.
“Although it is part of the inventory right now, my requirements in Afghanistan are such that I have got the weapons available [so] that I normally do not fly that weapon in Afghanistan right now,” he said.
North also said CENTAF was working with Air Combat Command (ACC) on contingency plans to fill the coverage gaps if the F-15Es remained grounded for an extended period.
“I am looking at all options,” he said. “ACC and my staff right now are developing options for a replacement unit that would be able to deploy such that we could continue the air tasking orders as required. It has yet to be determined if and when that occurs or what type of airplane that would be.”
Rotating in a new unit requires detailed planning and aircrew training and qualification, North said.
“It is a little bit harder than just replacing airplanes because you are in combat operations,” he said.