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ACC general tells F-15 pilots to stay sharp

Six weeks after an F-15C Eagle broke apart while on a training flight, the Air Combat Command boss is asking pilots to be patient and do what they can to stay sharp.

The Air Force’s F-15 Eagles remain grounded as investigators focus on metal fatigue issues in the front of the jet.

“While I know that a number of you will lose currencies and the ability to maintain the proficiency that the world has come to expect,” wrote Gen. John Corley, himself an F-15 pilot, “I ask that you don't lose your focus.

“Trust that your leadership is keeping a watchful eye and will be poised to execute a plan that will put all of you back in the air as fast as safely possible.”

The prolonged grounding is impacting the training of F-15 pilots who are expected to fly between nine and a dozen times each month. The grounding does not include F-15E Strike Eagles, a two-seat bomber version of the fighter.

The most immediate qualification that pilots stand to lose is the most basic — landing.

An inexperienced F-15 pilot — a flier with less than 500 hours in the jet — is expected to fly and land an F-15 at least once every 30 days to remain qualified, an ACC spokesman said. An experienced pilot is expected to fly a minimum of once every 45 days.

While many F-15 pilots were able to log flights during the few days the jets weren’t grounded since the Nov. 3 crash, the 30-day limit approaching fast for all the new pilots.

If a pilot loses his landing qualification, he can still fly the F-15, but he’ll have to make that initial return-to-flight landing with an instructor pilot flying close by, the spokesman said. Wing leaders also have latitude to grant some waivers.

Pilots are also losing that sharp sense of what it’s like to be in fighter cockpit dealing with high-Gs, a cramped cockpit, weather, listening to the radio and keeping a watch for other aircraft. Fighter pilots who don’t fly for as little as two weeks are often expected to fly a basic sortie as their first flight back in the cockpit.

While active-duty F-15s bases are equipped with high-fidelity simulators, the simulators can’t recreate the physical stresses of piloting a high-performance jet. During day-to-day training, the simulators are used for rehearsing missions and practicing emergency and other procedures.

So far, no additional jets have been found with cracks in the suspect longerons that reinforce the front of the jet and support the canopy structure. Inspections of the F-15s turned up eight F-15 with cracked longerons, including the Missouri Air National Guard F-15 that crashed Nov. 3

Two of the jets were assigned to the 18th Wing, Kadena Air Base, Japan; one to the 325th Fighter Wing, Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla.; and four to the Oregon Air National Guard’s 173rd Fighter Wing at Kingsley Field.

The Florida and Oregon units are training wings while Kadena is an operational unit.