On July 26, 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act while on board the VC-54C Sacred Cow. This act established the Air Force as an independent service, making the Sacred Cow, on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the birthplace of the Air Force.

On Feb. 19, visitors can celebrate Presidents Day while commemorating 60 years of the Air Force. The Presidential Gallery, located on the secure part of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, houses the Sacred Cow, as well as the pen used by Truman to sign the National Security Act.

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USAF Struggles To Replace Aging Aircraft
Age Limits 14% of Fleet

By GAYLE S. PUTRICH

The youngest of the U.S. military services finds itself burdened with the oldest equipment, facing major recapitalization challenges in an increasingly tight budget environment while trying to do its part in the global war on terror, U.S. Air Force officials say.
More than 800 of the service’s aircraft — 14 percent of the fleet — are grounded or have mission-limiting restrictions due to age, according to service officials.
“We are challenged with an aging fleet right now,” said Maj. Gen. David Edgington, director of global power programs in the Air Force acquisition office, at a Feb. 15 defense budget conference. “We are now the oldest of all the services.”
The Air Force, which has about 6,000 aircraft, is buying about 60 new ones each year, Edgington said.
“That’s a 100-year rate of recapitalization,” he said.
While those thousands of aircraft will not be replaced one-for-one, it may well take roughly a century of recapitalization, said defense analyst Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group in Virginia.
“There is an enormous requirement here,” Aboulafia said. “Maybe it’s not 100 years, but it’s going to take many, many decades.”
“Nobody wants to talk about” cutting force structure, he said, especially with a war on.
The Pentagon is focusing on the immediate needs in Iraq and Afghanistan, which mostly means funding Army and Marine Corps reset costs. In the meantime, Air Force equipment suffers unanticipated wear and tear, and program costs to replace it continue to skyrocket.
“There’s an awful lot being spent and not a lot being bought” he said, calling it a “scarytale.”
The service named five top-priority acquisition programs in its 2008 budget proposal, of which three will replace rapidly aging aircraft: the KC-X tanker replacement program, the CSAR-X search-and-rescue helicopter, and the next-generation long-range strike aircraft. None is moving quickly, and all are expected to rise in cost.
No. 1 on the list is the troubled $30 billion KC-X tanker program, slated to get $314 million in research, development and testing funds in 2008. The Air Force has struggled to rebuild a replacement plan for aging KC-135 tankers since 2001, when Congress put the kibosh on a proposal to lease 100 Boeing 767s.
On Jan. 30, the service issued a request for proposals for a contest expected to pit the Northrop-EADS Airbus KC-30 against Boeing’s smaller and cheaper KC-767. It will take about a year for the initial 179-plane contract to be awarded, according to Sue Payton, assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition.
The program will eventually expand to replace more planes, but it will take time. The new tanker is slated to enter service about 2013.
Right now, 41 Stratotanker KC-135Es are grounded, according to Maj. Gen. Frank Faykes, deputy assistant secretary for budget, and the average age of the KC-135E is 48.
The next-generation CSAR-X helicopter program, second on the list, is farther along than the tanker program, with funds in the 2008 budget proposal to cover near-term costs for three HH-47 Block 0 test aircraft expected to enter service in 2012.
But the program is on hold. When the contract to replace the HH-60 Pave Hawk fleet went to Boeing in November, Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky protested almost immediately, questioning whether the Air Force and the Office of the Secretary of Defense had actually picked a medium-lift helicopter. The protest resulted in a Nov. 22 stop-work order for Boeing and sparked a Government Accountability Office inquiry.
When the HH-60 entered service in 1982, the estimated service life was 20 years or 10,000 flight hours. The average age of the current Pave Hawk fleet is 16.6 years, according to Air Force officials.
Of the programs on the high-priority list, the farthest away from actual production is the next-generation, long-range strike aircraft. which the Air Force intends to debut by 2018, by relying largely on technologies available today or very soon.
“It is a huge challenge to be able to produce something in the 2018 time frame,” Edgington said. “We are talking about producing a bomber in eight years.”
Edgington said the current bomber fleet is still capable of getting the job done, but not without help.
“B-52s have to be heavily supported to be mission-effective,” he said.
He said there is a “bomber gap” created by not having a bomber in production or on the drawing board for the last decade.The 2008 budget includes $415 million for research and development toward the new aircraft and $387 million in procurement funds to improve existing bombers. The Air Force intends to develop and field a long-range bomber by 2018 by leveraging currently available technology.
A “transformational advanced technology capability” is not expected until 2035, according to Air Force budget documents. •
 

excerpt from www.defensenews.com

The U.S. Air Force has rebelled against the annoying late 20th century custom of creating many annual training courses to deal with persistent social or organizational problems. From now on, instead of spending nine hours a year attending training for things like suicide prevention, anti-terrorism awareness, handling classified data, sex related issues, and so on, only 90 minutes a year would be used for all these reminders. This move is very popular among those who have to sit through these sessions, and those who have to give them. The troops are also encouraged by such a bold move. In the past, every time another of these annual classes was added, there was grumbling about "spineless and clueless generals," and "damn politicians."