{"id":1189,"date":"2016-09-21T21:47:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T21:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2016-09-21T21:47:42","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T21:47:42","slug":"the-u-s-air-force-is-starting-to-think-about-its-next-strike-aircraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/2016\/09\/21\/the-u-s-air-force-is-starting-to-think-about-its-next-strike-aircraft\/","title":{"rendered":"THE U.S AIR FORCE IS STARTING TO THINK ABOUT ITS NEXT STRIKE AIRCRAFT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ASRAAM<\/a><\/p>\n

Sourced : Defence One<\/p>\n

By Caroline Houck<\/p>\n

Even as the U.S. Air Force is working to get its F-35s back in the air by year\u2019s end, service leaders are starting to think about their next strike aircraft.<\/p>\n

It is \u201cabsolutely essential that we look forward into the next generation of penetrating capability,\u201d Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told reporters who asked about the prospects for a new fighter to deploy along the F-35.<\/p>\n

Echoing the service\u2019s Air Superiority 2030 Flight Plan, released in May, Goldfein called for a new \u201cpenetrating counter-air\u201d capability that would \u201cpush as far forward\u201d as technologically feasible. He didn\u2019t say whether that capability would take the form of a network of weapons and other technologies or a sixth-generation fighter jet.<\/p>\n

But speaking Tuesday at the Air Force Association\u2019s Air Space & Cyber conference just outside Washington, D.C., the chief of staff noted that the new capability would have to compete for resources with the Air Force\u2019s other priorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very important, but it\u2019s also a planning choice,\u201d Goldfein said. \u201cThere\u2019s a current fight that we\u2019re in that requires a certain level of capacity, and that capacity has to have a current state of readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The general was referring to Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. fight against the Islamic State. The Air Force is doing much of the heavy lifting in the coalition operation, which as of May had already dropped more than 41,500 bombs on ISIS targets. Elsewhere at the conference, Air Combat Command\u2019s Gen. Hawk Carlisle estimated that on any given day, 60 to 70 percent of the munitions are delivered by \u201cthe United States Air Force, and the other 30 to 40 percent is the Navy, the Marines, and the coalition put together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the service is also piecing together funding to rebuild the force\u2019s manpower and modernize its nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n

More immediately, the Air Force\u2019s advanced air capabilities will depend on the scramble to bring the grounded F-35s back to operational capacity. After the service discovered that 57 jets\u201415 in operation use, 42 in production \u2014 were compromised by sub-standard tubing whose insulation crumbled into fuel tanks, it spent the next week and a half looking for a fix with the fighter jet\u2019s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.<\/p>\n

The current solution \u2014 to be validated early next week on a Lockheed ground test airplane \u2014 is to cut holes in the F-35\u2019s wings and go in through access panels to remove the faulty insulation, said Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the aircraft\u2019s program executive officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably within the next week or two we will start repairing airplanes,\u201d Bogdan said. \u201cOur first priority is the 15 airplanes in the field, and we will work our way back to resolving the 42 airplanes on the production line.\u201d<\/p>\n

As straightforward as Bogdan\u2019s description may sound, don\u2019t expect it to be completed immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the overall process for the 15 airplanes to be fielded will be completed in December,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will spend most of October and November modding those airplanes and getting them back into a flyable condition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Bogdan and Carlisle said the problem is confined to these 57 aircraft, which were equipped with a faulty batch of installation supplied by a sub-contractor. There are no similar problems with other A-, B- or C-models, they said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sourced : Defence One By Caroline Houck Even as the U.S. Air Force is working to get its F-35s back in the air by year\u2019s end, service leaders are starting to think about their next strike aircraft. It is \u201cabsolutely essential that we look forward into the next generation of penetrating capability,\u201d Chief of Staff… Continue reading THE U.S AIR FORCE IS STARTING TO THINK ABOUT ITS NEXT STRIKE AIRCRAFT<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[954,730,975],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence-industry","tag-f-35","tag-lockheed-martin","tag-u-s-air-force","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}