In my old Army unit, comparable equipment readiness numbers for armored vehicles would result in either a maintenance stand down or relieving commanders. I suspect the Air Force readiness posture is informed by NORS (not operationally ready supply-parts) more than NORM (not operationally ready-maintenance/staffing issues). I hope I am wrong.

How do you think all the woke libs will like living under China?

They long for Marxism. Seems they might get it up to the gills!

We are lucky that for now, almost every other country in the world, is probably worse off.

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Brown has spent the past few years unleashing worthless diversity reviews to try and blame the Air Force for a supposed lack of diversity, even though it now has a black chief of staff and a black top enlisted leader.

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"but but but they even have a black chief of staff!" Yes, I realize the author couldn't care less what color the chief of staff is. This is an example of how even people against wokeness have been trained.

The color of the chief of staff is not the point. The point is that the Air Force and the rest of the military is distracted with diversity check boxes and failing at their core mission. THAT is the argument that should be made.

We always seem to concede the left's narrative and debate on their terms when 90% of the time, their narrative has nothing to do with reality or common sense.

how much of this is us waiting on parts from Taiwan or china

BQ_90 said:

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how much of this is us waiting on parts from Taiwan or china

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Ugh. Even thinking about that vulnerability is frightening.

Wokeness sucks.

But so does having to rely on planes that are older than almost every pilot. MFP soloed in a T-38 that was built when I was 12 years old, 21 years before she was born. I have photos of her flying an F-16 that was built when she was 3 years old.

It was during a ferry flight, bringing the plane home after major maintenance at Hill AFB. She was delayed leaving Utah because the avionics were not working. She had to divert after her stopover in Amarillo because pressurization failed.

How many of you are driving cars that are 31 years old? Or using computers or home appliances that are 3 decades old?

I don't excuse the time wasted on wokeness. But expecting highly complex machines, working in extreme environments, to be working perfectly, well past their expected life, is not logical.

Big fan of air superiority, but even Dresden needed grunts to walk through the rubble, put bullets in heads, and hold ground. Where are we on that?

Not to mention partisan war

Is that why I see planes from Lackland in the air?

The article said the readiness in 2020 was 72.7% up from the historic low in 2018 of 70%. What were the factors then and why have they not fixed those. I remember the MAC (maybe aircraft comes) days.

CanyonAg77 said:

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How many of you are driving cars that are 31 years old? Or using computers or home appliances that are 3 decades old?

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All of us...TexAgs.

Article is implying a cause/effect dynamic that doesn't necessarily exist. That said, the military should be the last ******* institution to start caring about superfluous woke bull**** and the USAF should be adequately equipped to deal with all threats.

captkirk said:

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Chief of Staff Charles Brown and Chief Master Sergeant Kaleth Wright have made diversity and wokeness into the core of the Air Force's mission. Meanwhile the planes won't fly.

Brown has spent the past few years unleashing worthless diversity reviews to try and blame the Air Force for a supposed lack of diversity, even though it now has a black chief of staff and a black top enlisted leader. The military justification for their divisive shenanigans was that diversity equated somehow to military readiness. How is the Air Force's readiness?

The latest numbers show that the Air Force has made no progress in improving the readiness of its planes with a rate of 71.5% or 7 out of 10 planes in 2021.

The United States Air Force is supposed to have mission capable rates of 75% to 80%, but about the only aircraft that meet that criteria are the unmanned drones. The high ratings of the drones disguise the fact that the actual numbers, when broken down by aircraft, are worse.

The F-35As, the fifth generation fighters that would be crucial in countering any sizable aerial engagement with Communist China, dropped catastrophically from 76% to 68.8%.

Last year, the Biden administration boasted about the largest deployment of F-22 stealth fighters in the Pacific. Unfortunately their readiness hovers at around 50%.

Deploying fighters with the readiness rate of a coin flip won't impress Communist China.

The F-15E's, the workhorse fighter we rely on in every theater, is down from 69% to 66%, the F-15C are down to below 70%, and the situation is expected to worsen due to parts shortages. The C-130 Hercules, a backbone of our operation, has slipped below 70%. The CV-22 Osprey fell from 54% to 50%. The B-1 Lancer fell from 52% to 40%, and, at its worst, was at 10%.

All in all, only one Air Force aircraft actually met mission-capable goals: the venerable UH-1N Huey which is three years older than Chief of Staff Brown.

That's not just a disgrace, it's a catastrophe waiting to happen.

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https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/air-force-went-woke-its-planes-wont-fly-daniel-greenfield/

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Sounds like some people need firing, regardless of any diversity silliness.

We still have Hueys? We have any P-51s too?

BarnacleBill said:

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We still have Hueys? We have any P-51s too?

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Hey the Hueys are lot newer than most of the B-52s

****ty readiness stats for aircraft is not new. It has been a thing for at least 20 years and likely double that. It's mostly because we're still flying half century old equipment, while the newer stuff that's supposed to replace it takes decades themselves to get fielded and is often plagued with technical issues (i.e. more MX and downtime).

tk111 said:

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All in all, only one Air Force aircraft actually met mission-capable goals: the venerable UH-1N Huey which is three years older than Chief of Staff Brown.

Ah well good to know the only thing we're equipped to do is go for a rematch in the ia drang valley

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We lost that one too...

We haven't had to fight a near peer opponent for so long that we've completely lost our way. If we ever do, all that **** will go right out the window. The only thing that will matter to the average airman/soldier will be a CO that won't get them slaughtered due to incompetence.

Break out the old B-17 and B-24. Few of those are still flying around.

CanyonAg77 said:

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Wokeness sucks.

But so does having to rely on planes that are older than almost every pilot. MFP soloed in a T-38 that was built when I was 12 years old, 21 years before she was born. I have photos of her flying an F-16 that was built when she was 3 years old.

It was during a ferry flight, bringing the plane home after major maintenance at Hill AFB. She was delayed leaving Utah because the avionics were not working. She had to divert after her stopover in Amarillo because pressurization failed.

How many of you are driving cars that are 31 years old? Or using computers or home appliances that are 3 decades old?

I don't excuse the time wasted on wokeness. But expecting highly complex machines, working in extreme environments, to be working perfectly, well past their expected life, is not logical.

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I flew a lot of aircraft that were older than me. As long as the maintenance is there the age is somewhat irrelevant. If the maintenance isn't, then you have a problem as the article infers.

I am going to guess that a lot of the problem is Spare Parts related.

When Dems are in power they always direct the military to do things that the military is not designed to do. Unfortunately the Military ends up using the Spare Parts and Ammunition Budgets for those other purposes. Obama had the military spending lots of money on solar power, electric vehicles, alternative fuels, sex change surgeries and who knows what else. That money came out of spare parts, maintenance and ammunition. Readiness dropped significantly.

In Trumps first year he fought for an extra ~$75B in an add on to the Military Budget to try to recover from what Obama did. Trump only got that money by signing a Huge Omnibus Budget Bill that funded the entire Govt. Trump stated that he hated signing the bill but that was the only way that he got the money for the military.

Biden is doing the same and probably a lot worse than what Obama did. Between few spare parts and kicking people out of the military for vaccines status and anything else they can come up with our readiness will be below 50% in a couple of years. I would not be surprised if a lot of units are already classified as non-deployable.

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As long as the maintenance is there the age is somewhat irrelevant.

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Somewhat.

But consider a fighter aircraft, 30 years old or older. Miles of wiring. Thousands of feet of hydraulic piping. Circuit boards designed when Gerald Ford was President, and made during Bush 41. Engines that heat to over 3500 degrees and then cool down. Positive and Negative Gs. Sun, rain, dust, cold.

F-16s, for example, require about 33 man-hours of work for each hour flown. I suspect this increases as the airframe ages.

CanyonAg77 said:

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As long as the maintenance is there the age is somewhat irrelevant.

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Somewhat.

But consider a fighter aircraft, 30 years old or older. Miles of wiring. Thousands of feet of hydraulic piping. Circuit boards designed when Gerald Ford was President, and made during Bush 41. Engines that heat to over 3500 degrees and then cool down. Positive and Negative Gs. Sun, rain, dust, cold.

F-16s, for example, require about 33 man-hours of work for each hour flown. I suspect this increases as the airframe ages.

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Did you warn Orville and Wilbur, when they flew at Kitty Hawk?!

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Did you warn Orville and Wilbur, when they flew at Kitty Hawk?!

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No need. The plane was brand new.

What a high price to pay just so you can say "hey look at all the blacks we have in the Air Force!" If they have achieved and earned the right to be there, that's great. If they haven't, God help us.

CanyonAg77 said:

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How many of you are driving cars that are 31 years old?

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You got a problem with my ULTRA HOT window sticker?

Need to bring back DADT and cut all this diversity training bullsheeeet; get back to tactical and technical proficiency.

What happened to KISS?