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Age of U.S. aircraft fleets concerns in military
Josey1
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Age of U.S. aircraft fleets stirs concern in military
Mechanical failures eyed in Marine, Navy crashes
By Tom Bowman
Sun National Staff
Originally published April 15, 2002
WASHINGTON -- One morning last month, a Marine Corps CH-46D Sea Knight helicopter crashed into the Atlantic some 30 miles off the Georgia coast while scouring the waters for a downed civilian aircraft.
Four Marines were pulled from the chilly waters after the helicopter went down March 9. Two days later, the body of a Navy corpsman serving with the Marines, Petty Officer 1st Class Kevin J. Frank, 39, of Ocean City, Md., was found next to the helicopter, 90 feet below the surface.
The Sea Knight is one of 18 Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, helicopters and fixed-wing warplanes, that crashed between October and the end of last month, resulting in 19 deaths.
Investigators suspect mechanical or structural failures as a cause of the Sea Knight crash and 10 others, which killed a half-dozen servicemen, including two in Afghanistan. That is a far greater percentage than in any of the previous five years, according to a Navy official.
As a result, some officials suspect that the root cause of the deadly and costly crashes may be an aging aircraft fleet.
The Navy and Marine Corps aviation force is the oldest ever, with the average plane or helicopter 18 years old. The Sea Knight helicopter that went down off Georgia was 37 years old, officials said. And, even with new aircraft joining the fleet, the average age of the force is scheduled to increase to 20 years during the next five years.
"This might be symptomatic of an aged force with material problems," said the Navy official, who asked not to be named. "As the airplanes get older, they're going to require more care and attention and more inspections."
The corrosive maritime environment in which the Navy and the Marines operate is particularly hard on aircraft, officials said.
The initial suspicions may not be borne out in all of the crash investigations. They can take up to a year and often lay the blame on the pilot, officials note. And Navy Secretary Gordon R. England said in a recent interview that he has yet to see any evidence of a trend in the recent crashes of Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, cautioning, "You don't know until you do the actual analysis."
But the steadily rising age of naval aircraft is a growing concern for top officers, including Gen. James Jones, commandant of the Marine Corps and a decorated Vietnam veteran, who raised the issue last month before the House subcommittee that oversees defense spending.
"We have CH-53Ds which are 31 years old, well past their service life," he told the lawmakers. "The CH-46 predates me in active service, and look what I look like after 35 years."
Navy and Marine officials stress that no aircraft is allowed to fly without strict inspections and proper maintenance. Still, a Pentagon official said, "you don't know what's going to break on an old airplane." And with the aviation fleet rising in age, "you could expect more problems, not less."
Moreover, the replacements for these older fixed-wing planes and helicopters are sometimes years off because of budget constraints and the search for suitable substitutes. More and more money that could be used for replacements is being sapped by steadily rising maintenance costs for aging aircraft, officials said.
Bernard S. Loeb, former director of the Office of Air Safety for the National Transportation Safety Board, agreed that aging aircraft could suffer more mechanical problems.
"The older it gets, the more times you have to put your hands on the airplane" for maintenance, he said. And more maintenance means a greater likelihood for error or oversight. "It becomes even more of a problem if the airplane is in an environment that facilitates corrosion or similar kinds of problems," he said.
"Corrosion is the main thing. If you want to fix it, it's costly because of the maintenance," said Ramana Pidaparti, professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, who is trying to develop a system to predict structural failures on aging aircraft to aid maintenance workers.
Richard L. Perry, a retired Air Force colonel who is a manager for airworthiness assurance at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., a federal government research and development facility, said word of the suspected Navy and Marine Corps crash trend had reached him through his Air Force contacts. Perry was director of engineering and system safety at the crash-investigating Air Force Safety Center until 1996.
"The Navy is at least seeing the appearance of a trend this year," said Perry. "Older airplanes can be managed effectively, as long as you're careful in assessing the environment and the inspection process," he said.
The concern over the recent Navy and Marine Corps crashes comes against a downward trend in mechanical and structural failures. In the past 10 years, the number of such problems -- so-called material failures -- contributing to a crash has been 0.86 per 100,000 flight hours. In the past five years, it dropped to 0.71 per 100,000 flight hours, according to Navy statistics.
"Usually we don't get a lot of material crashes," said the Navy official. With the crashes since October, there could be a "significant increase," the official said. "In the worst case, it could double."
Questions over the cause of the recent accidents come at a time when the total number of accidents has dropped. In 1999, the Navy posted its safest year, with just nine accidents. And last year was the Marine Corps' best for air safety, with 1.4 serious accidents for every 100,000 flying hours.
Other accidents in the past six months in which mechanical or structural failures are suspected as a factor include one involving another Sea Knight helicopter, this one 34 years old, that crashed Feb. 7 off southern Virginia. There were no fatalities. Still another involved a 26-year-old UH-1N Huey helicopter that crashed in February while on a training mission near Camp Pendleton, Calif., killing two Marines.
But not all of those aircraft involved in accidents were above the average age. An F-14 Tomcat that launched off the carrier USS John F. Kennedy last month and suffered a collapsed nose-wheel was 13 years old. The crash killed its 35-year-old veteran pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Christopher M. Blaschum, father of two young children.
Another crash being reviewed involved an 8-year-old Marine CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter that slammed into mountainous territory in northern Afghanistan on Jan. 20, killing two Marines. Pentagon officials have said the probable cause of the crash was a mechanical problem.
In November, two EA-6B Prowler radar-jamming jets crashed in separate training flights. One accident took place off Washington state. The age of the plane could not be determined. The other Prowler was 11 years old and fell into the Atlantic off southern Virginia. In both cases the crew was rescued. "It looks like two blown engines" as the cause of both accidents, said a Navy official.
Meanwhile, the Air Force is not seeing any increase in material failures leading to crashes, said Lt. Col. Dave Talley, an Air Force spokesman, although statistics comparable to the Navy's were not available. The Army's helicopter fleet has had only a small number of mechanical or structural failures contributing to accidents in the past two fiscal years: one out of six accidents in 2000 and two out of 10 accidents in 2001. Army figures were not available for the current year.
The Navy Department is trying to compensate for its aging fleet of aircraft with more money for inspections and maintenance.
Between 2001 and 2003, the Navy and Marine Corps deferred buying 48 aircraft and instead put $3.1 billion earmarked for new planes into a variety of accounts, from spare parts to engineering, that would support the aging force, said a Navy budget analyst.
The Navy and Marine Corps plan to purchase 83 aircraft next year and 96 in 2004. Annual aircraft purchases are expected to rise to 193 in 2007, officials said.
Navy officials say the money needed to keep an old aircraft flying is akin to the cost of finding and paying for spare parts for a vintage car.
The cost of maintaining the EA-6B Prowler, a sophisticated radar-jamming jet, is more than $18,000 per flight hour, the costliest among all naval aircraft. The F-14 Tomcat costs only slightly less an hour. By contrast, maintaining the newer F/A-18 warplane is about $8,000, according to the Navy.
"The EA-6B, the best jammer in the world, is getting old," Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, testified last month before the House defense spending subcommittee. A new radar-jamming jet is at the top of his list, he told the lawmakers.
For the Prowlers, there are three replacement options, including a new variant of the same plane. The other possibilities include a radar-jamming version of the F/A-18 or the planned Joint Strike Fighter.
Though some in the Pentagon are saying the Prowlers can be maintained through 2015, the Navy is pressing for a 2010 replacement date.
Within the next weeks, a major Pentagon policy road map -- Defense Planning Guidance -- is expected to back the earlier replacement date, defense officials said, owing to the importance of the plane. During a military conflict, the Prowler is among the first planes into a combat zone.
The CH-53E helicopters, one of which crashed in Afghanistan, will be upgraded in a program that will extend their service by at least 25 years, said Capt. Dave Nevers, a Marine Corps spokesman. But the upgrades are not slated to begin until 2010.
Initially, the Navy wanted to replace its F-14 Tomcats with the F/A-18 Super Hornets between 2007 and 2008. Clark hopes to begin replacing those warplanes starting in 2005. "The reason is they [the Tomcats] cost so much to operate," said a senior Navy official.
The Navy expects to retire its CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters and turn to the CH-60S Knighthawks and SH-60R Seahawks by 2004, and the Marines are looking to the V-22 Osprey as a replacement for both of its version of the CH-46 and CH-53D helicopters. The Osprey, a tilt-rotor aircraft that crashed twice in 2000, killing 23 Marines, must go through a series of detailed testing that is expected to last at least two years.
"It's going to be at least a few years before the V-22 is able to deploy," said Nevers.
Copyright c 2002, The Baltimore Sun
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"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Mechanical failures eyed in Marine, Navy crashes
By Tom Bowman
Sun National Staff
Originally published April 15, 2002
WASHINGTON -- One morning last month, a Marine Corps CH-46D Sea Knight helicopter crashed into the Atlantic some 30 miles off the Georgia coast while scouring the waters for a downed civilian aircraft.
Four Marines were pulled from the chilly waters after the helicopter went down March 9. Two days later, the body of a Navy corpsman serving with the Marines, Petty Officer 1st Class Kevin J. Frank, 39, of Ocean City, Md., was found next to the helicopter, 90 feet below the surface.
The Sea Knight is one of 18 Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, helicopters and fixed-wing warplanes, that crashed between October and the end of last month, resulting in 19 deaths.
Investigators suspect mechanical or structural failures as a cause of the Sea Knight crash and 10 others, which killed a half-dozen servicemen, including two in Afghanistan. That is a far greater percentage than in any of the previous five years, according to a Navy official.
As a result, some officials suspect that the root cause of the deadly and costly crashes may be an aging aircraft fleet.
The Navy and Marine Corps aviation force is the oldest ever, with the average plane or helicopter 18 years old. The Sea Knight helicopter that went down off Georgia was 37 years old, officials said. And, even with new aircraft joining the fleet, the average age of the force is scheduled to increase to 20 years during the next five years.
"This might be symptomatic of an aged force with material problems," said the Navy official, who asked not to be named. "As the airplanes get older, they're going to require more care and attention and more inspections."
The corrosive maritime environment in which the Navy and the Marines operate is particularly hard on aircraft, officials said.
The initial suspicions may not be borne out in all of the crash investigations. They can take up to a year and often lay the blame on the pilot, officials note. And Navy Secretary Gordon R. England said in a recent interview that he has yet to see any evidence of a trend in the recent crashes of Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, cautioning, "You don't know until you do the actual analysis."
But the steadily rising age of naval aircraft is a growing concern for top officers, including Gen. James Jones, commandant of the Marine Corps and a decorated Vietnam veteran, who raised the issue last month before the House subcommittee that oversees defense spending.
"We have CH-53Ds which are 31 years old, well past their service life," he told the lawmakers. "The CH-46 predates me in active service, and look what I look like after 35 years."
Navy and Marine officials stress that no aircraft is allowed to fly without strict inspections and proper maintenance. Still, a Pentagon official said, "you don't know what's going to break on an old airplane." And with the aviation fleet rising in age, "you could expect more problems, not less."
Moreover, the replacements for these older fixed-wing planes and helicopters are sometimes years off because of budget constraints and the search for suitable substitutes. More and more money that could be used for replacements is being sapped by steadily rising maintenance costs for aging aircraft, officials said.
Bernard S. Loeb, former director of the Office of Air Safety for the National Transportation Safety Board, agreed that aging aircraft could suffer more mechanical problems.
"The older it gets, the more times you have to put your hands on the airplane" for maintenance, he said. And more maintenance means a greater likelihood for error or oversight. "It becomes even more of a problem if the airplane is in an environment that facilitates corrosion or similar kinds of problems," he said.
"Corrosion is the main thing. If you want to fix it, it's costly because of the maintenance," said Ramana Pidaparti, professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, who is trying to develop a system to predict structural failures on aging aircraft to aid maintenance workers.
Richard L. Perry, a retired Air Force colonel who is a manager for airworthiness assurance at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., a federal government research and development facility, said word of the suspected Navy and Marine Corps crash trend had reached him through his Air Force contacts. Perry was director of engineering and system safety at the crash-investigating Air Force Safety Center until 1996.
"The Navy is at least seeing the appearance of a trend this year," said Perry. "Older airplanes can be managed effectively, as long as you're careful in assessing the environment and the inspection process," he said.
The concern over the recent Navy and Marine Corps crashes comes against a downward trend in mechanical and structural failures. In the past 10 years, the number of such problems -- so-called material failures -- contributing to a crash has been 0.86 per 100,000 flight hours. In the past five years, it dropped to 0.71 per 100,000 flight hours, according to Navy statistics.
"Usually we don't get a lot of material crashes," said the Navy official. With the crashes since October, there could be a "significant increase," the official said. "In the worst case, it could double."
Questions over the cause of the recent accidents come at a time when the total number of accidents has dropped. In 1999, the Navy posted its safest year, with just nine accidents. And last year was the Marine Corps' best for air safety, with 1.4 serious accidents for every 100,000 flying hours.
Other accidents in the past six months in which mechanical or structural failures are suspected as a factor include one involving another Sea Knight helicopter, this one 34 years old, that crashed Feb. 7 off southern Virginia. There were no fatalities. Still another involved a 26-year-old UH-1N Huey helicopter that crashed in February while on a training mission near Camp Pendleton, Calif., killing two Marines.
But not all of those aircraft involved in accidents were above the average age. An F-14 Tomcat that launched off the carrier USS John F. Kennedy last month and suffered a collapsed nose-wheel was 13 years old. The crash killed its 35-year-old veteran pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Christopher M. Blaschum, father of two young children.
Another crash being reviewed involved an 8-year-old Marine CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter that slammed into mountainous territory in northern Afghanistan on Jan. 20, killing two Marines. Pentagon officials have said the probable cause of the crash was a mechanical problem.
In November, two EA-6B Prowler radar-jamming jets crashed in separate training flights. One accident took place off Washington state. The age of the plane could not be determined. The other Prowler was 11 years old and fell into the Atlantic off southern Virginia. In both cases the crew was rescued. "It looks like two blown engines" as the cause of both accidents, said a Navy official.
Meanwhile, the Air Force is not seeing any increase in material failures leading to crashes, said Lt. Col. Dave Talley, an Air Force spokesman, although statistics comparable to the Navy's were not available. The Army's helicopter fleet has had only a small number of mechanical or structural failures contributing to accidents in the past two fiscal years: one out of six accidents in 2000 and two out of 10 accidents in 2001. Army figures were not available for the current year.
The Navy Department is trying to compensate for its aging fleet of aircraft with more money for inspections and maintenance.
Between 2001 and 2003, the Navy and Marine Corps deferred buying 48 aircraft and instead put $3.1 billion earmarked for new planes into a variety of accounts, from spare parts to engineering, that would support the aging force, said a Navy budget analyst.
The Navy and Marine Corps plan to purchase 83 aircraft next year and 96 in 2004. Annual aircraft purchases are expected to rise to 193 in 2007, officials said.
Navy officials say the money needed to keep an old aircraft flying is akin to the cost of finding and paying for spare parts for a vintage car.
The cost of maintaining the EA-6B Prowler, a sophisticated radar-jamming jet, is more than $18,000 per flight hour, the costliest among all naval aircraft. The F-14 Tomcat costs only slightly less an hour. By contrast, maintaining the newer F/A-18 warplane is about $8,000, according to the Navy.
"The EA-6B, the best jammer in the world, is getting old," Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, testified last month before the House defense spending subcommittee. A new radar-jamming jet is at the top of his list, he told the lawmakers.
For the Prowlers, there are three replacement options, including a new variant of the same plane. The other possibilities include a radar-jamming version of the F/A-18 or the planned Joint Strike Fighter.
Though some in the Pentagon are saying the Prowlers can be maintained through 2015, the Navy is pressing for a 2010 replacement date.
Within the next weeks, a major Pentagon policy road map -- Defense Planning Guidance -- is expected to back the earlier replacement date, defense officials said, owing to the importance of the plane. During a military conflict, the Prowler is among the first planes into a combat zone.
The CH-53E helicopters, one of which crashed in Afghanistan, will be upgraded in a program that will extend their service by at least 25 years, said Capt. Dave Nevers, a Marine Corps spokesman. But the upgrades are not slated to begin until 2010.
Initially, the Navy wanted to replace its F-14 Tomcats with the F/A-18 Super Hornets between 2007 and 2008. Clark hopes to begin replacing those warplanes starting in 2005. "The reason is they [the Tomcats] cost so much to operate," said a senior Navy official.
The Navy expects to retire its CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters and turn to the CH-60S Knighthawks and SH-60R Seahawks by 2004, and the Marines are looking to the V-22 Osprey as a replacement for both of its version of the CH-46 and CH-53D helicopters. The Osprey, a tilt-rotor aircraft that crashed twice in 2000, killing 23 Marines, must go through a series of detailed testing that is expected to last at least two years.
"It's going to be at least a few years before the V-22 is able to deploy," said Nevers.
Copyright c 2002, The Baltimore Sun
Also see
Top Stories
Air China jet crash in S. Korea kills 118 (3:07 PM)
Pontiff summons cardinals from U.S.
Prelates and John Paul to address widening sexual abuse scandal; Invitation 'very extraordinary' (9:21 PM)
Former Justice Byron White dies at 84 (2:52 PM)
New bin Laden video surfaces
Arab TV station airs tape featuring man identified as one of the Sept. 11 hijackers (3:42 PM)
4 U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan
Explosion occurred as troops were trying to dispose of old rockets (3:28 PM)
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.crashes15apr15.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878