70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

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First Shirt
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

Post by First Shirt »

I don't think it's quite that simple. But I also think you know that.
But there ain't many troubles that a man caint fix, with seven hundred dollars and a thirty ought six."
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Aesop
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

Post by Aesop »

Image
Meh. Congress and the DoD lied women into a plethora of military jobs in the first place, for decades.
If you think TPTB are above lying them right back out the door if the opportunity presents itself (and are similarly above engineering such opportunities given half a chance), you're too naïve to be talking about it.

The greater lesson is this is the military you get when you elect douchebags in the first place, and that as long as their pork is protected, most of Congress doesn't give two shits about it either, all protests to the contrary notwithstanding.

Hamstringing the military is a poor choice when it starts people thinking that a coup is a better solution than another election.
Especially people with command of large numbers of well-armed troops.
There is nothing magical that prevents here the sort of thinking that's been rampant in every other country throughout history, especially when you spend an entire administration underlining for folks that laws are an inconvenience, rather than a guardrail against stupidity.

The wrong sort of people tend to take that lesson, run with it, and pin it into your liver.
"There are four types of homicide: felonious, accidental, justifiable, and praiseworthy." -Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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JAG2955
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

Post by JAG2955 »

So is it 70% are grounded, cannot fly at all? I highly doubt it.

Or 70% are below mission capable, either partial or full? Perhaps. Non-mission capable doesn't mean that they can't fly at all, necessarily. Eight years ago, 30% mission capable for the Osprey would have been incredible. Now that the logistics pipeline is mature for that platform, it's not good.

Words mean things, Mr. Journalist, Mr. PAO.

Pulling things off of static display birds and museum pieces (or worse) isn't anything that's crazy. We did it in 2009. There was also a contractor who worked for Sikorsky who was a former Marine. He'd take home parts that were going to be DRMO'd for scrap/trash and just stash them in his backyard. Every once in awhile, we'd need something, he'd tell us that he had it, drive home, and bring it back in his truck.

You can also have engineering inspections/recalls that do ground extremely large parts of the aircraft fleet for days/weeks at a time. The new crash-worthy battery issue springs to mind. The Corps bought some new batteries that weren't supposed to leak or spark in a crash. Turned out that they liked to burst into flames midflight. But of course, all of the old batteries had already been DRMO'd and bought by a civilian company, I believe they were called Bell Helicopter or similar (no relation to the helicopter manufacturer). So those assholes sell them back at $2,400 a piece, $100 less than the limit to start a contract. The original batteries were about the same price as a truck battery. So we got to ground large parts of the fleet, shuffle around batteries, and open purchase one per squadron each month until the battery fix was back in.
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randy
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

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JAG2955 wrote:Pulling things off of static display birds and museum pieces (or worse) isn't anything that's crazy. We did it in 2009.
Back in the 80's the AC-130 guys at Hurlburt were known to go the USS Alabama at Mobile and borrow parts from the 40mm AA mounts to either replace parts on the guns on the birds, or to use as templates for manufacturing new parts.
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
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Jericho941
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

Post by Jericho941 »

Aesop wrote:Image
Meh. Congress and the DoD lied women into a plethora of military jobs in the first place, for decades.
If you think TPTB are above lying them right back out the door if the opportunity presents itself (and are similarly above engineering such opportunities given half a chance), you're too naïve to be talking about it.
Well, if nothing else, it'd make for good television.
JAG2955 wrote:So is it 70% are grounded, cannot fly at all? I highly doubt it.

Or 70% are below mission capable, either partial or full? Perhaps. Non-mission capable doesn't mean that they can't fly at all, necessarily. Eight years ago, 30% mission capable for the Osprey would have been incredible. Now that the logistics pipeline is mature for that platform, it's not good.

Words mean things, Mr. Journalist, Mr. PAO.
Yeah, I think it'd be interesting to see a breakdown by airframe and squadron. 30% FMC across the board is cause for alarm, but may not be the case everywhere.

Still, airpower never comes cheap. Either we're going to have to cough up a lot more money for parts (for every branch really, it's hard times all around) or simply reduce the mission load. We can say "do more with less" until the cows come home but the thing about machines is that they really do have hard limits on how much they can do.

It's good that they mentioned maintainers are getting out to join the private sector. That's actually a big problem. Aircraft maintenance is really something you have to do for a few years to get a real grip on it, so by the time most guys really start to hit their stride, it's time to reenlist or get out. Given that maintainers have been inheriting a dumpster fire for decades now where parts, tools and manning are in ever-shrinking supply, and the services have been trying to get rid of them anyway as they downsize, that results in a huge brain drain. Then they go on to work for contractors doing the same job without all the military trappings and crazy things like "overtime." Trying to save money by dumping your maintainers is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

Post by Aesop »

This isn't PAOs. When you have a squadron commander on camera openly stating he has two flyable F-18Cs in a squadron of ten, with deployment in a few weeks, the "70% grounded" number may be sugarcoating the truth. It's apparently worse.
When you have squadron pilots getting 4 flying hours/month, SecDef Ass Carter has got to be on the verge of authorizing time on retail flightsim games to count in lieu of actual time in the air.

The people promulgating "mission capable" numbers may indeed be the same people telling us how great the F-35 is going to be. Someday. When we have any of them. We think.

This is my look of shocked surprise. :roll:
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JAG2955
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

Post by JAG2955 »

This is still a common thing. Without looking at who is deployed, and who is stuck at home, for all we know, the Corps could have thrown together a composite squadron, and raped and pillaged all of the operating birds from other squadrons to put one together.

It sounds to me like there was a directive to repair/inspect all CH-53s and return them to their "pre-war condition." Whatever that means, which is nothing. It may mean that they're going to remove all of the extensions for high-time parts (parts that have to be replaced at certain intervals can get extensions approved depending on conditions, both physical and otherwise). Which, if that all has to happen at once, is a GIANT PAIN IN THE ASS. Because for certain parts, like main gearboxes, rotor heads, and swashplates, that takes large amounts of personnel, Ground Support Equipment (GSE), proper containers (for storage/return of parts), and most importantly, the spare part themselves.

The last time I checked, a long-time clumsy machinist could count the number of spare Marine CH-53 main gearboxes on his hand with the fewest fingers. That's a high-time item. If they removed the extensions from it, the whole CH-53 fleet is boned until they can get the one spare, did I say one? Yes. Replace the broken one, return the spare, get the depot to fix it, and then do it all over again until everyone is caught up.

You can have a bird grounded because some numb-nuts pilot lost the AirCard, which is a fancy name for a credit card that they can use to refuel the plane at a civilian airfield, because it's tied to the plane's serial number.
Aesop wrote:
The people promulgating "mission capable" numbers may indeed be the same people telling us how great the F-35 is going to be.
No, "mission capable" is exactly how you measure the performance of the maintenance department, and is the readiness metric of your squadron. Want to have a partial-mission capable CH-53? Remove the rescue winch. Put it back on, pow, full mission capable.

Want to replace a perfectly good AH-1's turret? Oh, be sure to fix that tail support stand that some idiot broke. If you don't, you can't remove the turret because it will cause the center of gravity to shift aft, fall on the tail rotor/tail boom and then be really broken. So it's flyable, but it's non-mission capable. Speaking of turrets, make certain that your Packing, Packaging, and Preservation guys have the proper materials to construct crates in accordance with the NAVSUP P700 manual. No 1" high-density foam for the base? No shipping turrets back to the depot to be repaired. Or maybe some moron in Ordnance just hammered the bolts that secure the turret to the crate down, instead of finding nuts to fit. Thanks, now i have to use a crowbar to unbend the bolts, go get my one and only damn forklift up to lift this turret out, put it on the floor, and fix a damn crate because of an idiot with a hammer.

Sorry, that actually happened.

My point is that without seeing an actual readiness report, which can even be misleading, because it's just a snapshot in time, we can't pass judgement. These things have happened, happen, and are going to happen again.
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Jericho941
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

Post by Jericho941 »

JAG2955 wrote:This is still a common thing. Without looking at who is deployed, and who is stuck at home, for all we know, the Corps could have thrown together a composite squadron, and raped and pillaged all of the operating birds from other squadrons to put one together.
There certainly is that. Jets going on a Real Deployment have absolute priority over those on rotated training time.
It sounds to me like there was a directive to repair/inspect all CH-53s and return them to their "pre-war condition." Whatever that means, which is nothing. It may mean that they're going to remove all of the extensions for high-time parts (parts that have to be replaced at certain intervals can get extensions approved depending on conditions, both physical and otherwise). Which, if that all has to happen at once, is a GIANT PAIN IN THE ASS. Because for certain parts, like main gearboxes, rotor heads, and swashplates, that takes large amounts of personnel, Ground Support Equipment (GSE), proper containers (for storage/return of parts), and most importantly, the spare part themselves.
I don't know how delayed discrepancies are handled by Marine aviation, but similar things happen in the Air Force as well. Someone with enough rank decides that the stack of DDs must be addressed, and then all hell breaks loose. Most of those discrepancies were delayed in the first place for a reason, usually a lack of spare parts. Sometimes this can mean successful "greening up" of a fleet, other times it results in maintenance pulling maximum shifts and weekend duties running their heads into a wall until reality finally kills the Good Idea Fairy.
Aesop wrote:The people promulgating "mission capable" numbers may indeed be the same people telling us how great the F-35 is going to be.
No, "mission capable" is exactly how you measure the performance of the maintenance department, and is the readiness metric of your squadron. Want to have a partial-mission capable CH-53? Remove the rescue winch. Put it back on, pow, full mission capable.
On that note, I would add that configs sometimes come into play when it comes to the whole FMC/PMC/NMC thing. (Again, caveat: Air Force). An A-10 without a TGP will be considered FMC for some missions and PMC for others. On the other hand, since the nav and target pods are considered part of what make an F-15E whole, a Mudhen without a TGP is NMC, even if it is perfectly airworthy.*

*unless it's being ferried for depot maintenance, then the pods are left behind.
My point is that without seeing an actual readiness report, which can even be misleading, because it's just a snapshot in time, we can't pass judgement. These things have happened, happen, and are going to happen again.
I do think that it is noteworthy that they're speaking directly with mainstream media about this, without apparently being filtered through Public Affairs and/or AFN. Historically, when maintenance starts talking to the media, it means heads are either already rolling or are about to. See: C-5, V-22.

EDIT: I have no desire to try and repaint this picture as rosy, just make sure we're assessing it with the right context, y'know? I mean, I got out of AF maintenance in large part because I honestly believe that the only way for TPTB to realize enough was enough would be after aircrew started dying, and this was not a situation I felt I had any power whatsoever to change. Best-case: Save lives, delay the inevitable. Worst-case: Fail to save lives, hang as a scapegoat.
Last edited by Jericho941 on Mon Apr 18, 2016 3:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
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JAG2955
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

Post by JAG2955 »

Jericho941 wrote:
I do think that it is noteworthy that they're speaking directly with mainstream media about this, without apparently being filtered through Public Affairs and/or AFN. Historically, when maintenance starts talking to the media, it means heads are either already rolling or are about to. See: C-5, V-22.
If media was on base, there certainly was a PAO within earshot of the interviewer/interviewee. But there's a fairly good chances that neither the PAO nor the pilots knew what they were talking about. The Aviation Maintenance Officers got very little time on screen.
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Jericho941
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Re: 70% of Marine Aircraft Grounded

Post by Jericho941 »

Hmm, yeah. That reminds me, I've been meaning to ask: Are Marine MX officers still pilots as well, or have they created a specialty career field for it?
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