Good article from the WSJ


     The Fire Next Time
     God save the American soldier from those who would defend the country on the cheap.
     [url]www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/mhelprin/?id=90000482[/url]
     BY MARK HELPRIN
     Tuesday, April 24, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

     

History repeating itself.

BTT

Hey, I feel your pain.  Here is a current status report from a reserve patrol squadron flying P-3C Orions.  You may have seen pics of the planes on TV recently. :)

In 1994
8 aircraft
75-85% fully mission capable
90%+ flyable at any time
250+ personnel
We hunted subs, surface ships, patroled the gulf etc.

In 2001
6 aircraft - we txfered ours to the active force because they were running out of airframe hours.  We got the high time POS airframes.  One just left on a one time flight for rework because corrosion ate through critical structure. One is taped up on the ramp missing engines, another is missing two props.
10-15% fully mission capable
20% flyable for trash hauling flights.
160 personnel.
We fly counterdrug runs in South america.  In 3 years we caught 1 boat and took lots of pics.

The planes were build in the early 1970s.  Estimated replacements for active force is 'maybe' in 2015.  Add 5 years for reserve.

BTW - computer geeks: our main computer has 16K (kilo) of ferrite core memory and runs at 1.5 Mhz.

Everbody now: Thank You Bill!

Fritz