MD KC-10 retired too soon?

HeyEng said:
Which was always pretty stupid because depot has a very specific requirement which does not include the stuff that can be fixed on the line. When they started compressing the depot schedule, they started sending jets back with the deferred MX items still there. It was a fight no one could win.
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Yup. And line units doing that end up bogging down depot if they expect depot to fix line ifems, takes time away from the repairs or upgrades the plane is actually there for. AMC units were one of the biggest offenders of this, with the large expense and man hours in aircraft repairs their large airplanes took, compared to others.

But it’s AMC….Anything, Minus Combat….so they excel at being scam central. 😂
 
MikeD said:
Yup. And line units doing that end up bogging down depot if they expect depot to fix line ifems, takes time away from the repairs or upgrades the plane is actually there for. AMC units were one of the biggest offenders of this, with the large expense and man hours in aircraft repairs their large airplanes took, compared to others.

But it’s AMC….Anything, Minus Combat….so they excel at being scam central. 😂
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So much truth to this, Mike. I do miss some of the fun flying, but not any of the BS that went with it (which was about 80% of the work). My last post about DCMA and the debacle that was: At some point, we got to be known as the "no go bitches" because we took issue with being given jets that clearly not ready to fly and raising a stink about it. So, being the • we were, we made a new patch. As you might guess, it went over like a fart in church...which we LOVED. And with our CC being a non'er...the humor was lost on him. ;)

Patch.jpg
 
HeyEng said:
It went from "holy shiznat I get to do what?!?" to "holy shiznat they are trying to kill me!" pretty quick. So many detrimental things we would find and implore the AF to have fixed, but the program office at Wright-Patt would always say, "nah, it's good enough", we are taking it. Oye.
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Same in the Army.

I limped a helicopter from Huntsville to Fort Hood that was because, “we can’t wait on it and the parts to fix it are here.” Just fly it in the day time in case the now single mission processor fails… no big deal. It’s one F up from being a Sopwith Camel so we will just say in class G as much as possible and fly lead for a wingman with a good aircraft. Had to brief divert plans as we passed them the whole way of “I’m going here if it •s its self.”

Also had one we had to pull a head apart on only to find it was ~5-7 hours away from a catastrophic separation of the mast due to a wire milling out a channel on a part you can’t observe. It had just come back from Theatre Sustainment after a full reset. Universe looking after somebody that day.


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Soku39 said:
My old unit would wait for the AEF (now AFFORGEN) cycle to hit. We'd send 4 tails to the desert the first 3 months and they'd get all fixed up with that CENTCOM money, halfway through we'd do a 1 to 1 swap, send the other 4 tails and replace crews so no one had to do over 90 unless they wanted to. Then we'd have 8 good tails by the end of it and they would slowly start to break over the course of the 13-15 months until we were back on the hook for the next cycle. Worked like a charm.
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Unfortunately, during the war, that was the reality many units had to live with. I saw this with C-130 in particular, as they came into theatre and sat there as rotator assets, not came and left like C-141/17/5s would.….namely I saw this with the Pope wing. And they got creative in getting aircraft fixed and Code 1 for the deployments…as all of their parts were packed away in the deployed kits, and home station Mx couldn’t get the parts to fix the birds at home. So they would fly them into theatre to get repaired as ultimately those planes were rotating into the AOR for the mission anyway.

C-130s rotated home usually for their Isochronal Inspection about every 9 months as there was no capability to perform the ISO Inspection in theater like Mx could with tactical jets. So these tactical airlift Wings that were deployed continuously for many years, they did what they had to do to keep the tails flying and the mission supported, ugly solutions as they were
 
MikeD said:
Unfortunately, during the war, that was the reality many units had to live with. I saw this with C-130 in particular, as they came into theatre and sat there as rotator assets, not came and left like C-141/17/5s would.….namely I saw this with the Pope wing. And they got creative in getting aircraft fixed and Code 1 for the deployments…as all of their parts were packed away in the deployed kits, and home station Mx couldn’t get the parts to fix the birds at home. So they would fly them into theatre to get repaired as ultimately those planes were rotating into the AOR for the mission anyway.

C-130s rotated home usually for their Isochronal Inspection about every 9 months as there was no capability to perform the ISO Inspection in theater like Mx could with tactical jets. So these tactical airlift Wings that were deployed continuously for many years, they did what they had to do to keep the tails flying and the mission supported, ugly solutions as they were
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No hope Pope. Spent about 7 years of my young life living on that base.
 
MikeD said:
Yup. And line units doing that end up bogging down depot if they expect depot to fix line ifems, takes time away from the repairs or upgrades the plane is actually there for. AMC units were one of the biggest offenders of this, with the large expense and man hours in aircraft repairs their large airplanes took, compared to others.

But it’s AMC….Anything, Minus Combat….so they excel at being scam central. 😂
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Do the cargo and tanker planes break everywhere they go or just the places with nice weather and beaches? In my 6 years at Tyndall the only cargo/tanker I saw depart when it was supposed to was a C-17 picking up a general.
 
NovemberEcho said:
Do the cargo and tanker planes break everywhere they go or just the places with nice weather and beaches? In my 6 years at Tyndall the only cargo/tanker I saw depart when it was supposed to was a C-17 picking up a general.
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They have 2 different lists for minimum launch criteria’s so as soon as they leave the combat airspace they are legally broke and have to default to the more stringent non combat one.

That’s why they could always leave without overnighting in Bagram but end up sitting in Rota or Sprang for 2 months.


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NovemberEcho said:
Do the cargo and tanker planes break everywhere they go or just the places with nice weather and beaches? In my 6 years at Tyndall the only cargo/tanker I saw depart when it was supposed to was a C-17 picking up a general.
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Lawman said:
They have 2 different lists for minimum launch criteria’s so as soon as they leave the combat airspace they are legally broke and have to default to the more stringent non combat one.

That’s why they could always leave without overnighting in Bagram but end up sitting in Rota or Sprang for 2 months.


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Like I said, AMC…..Anything, Minus Combat, Command.
 
Man, Air Force (and i guess Army) sounds bananas. We sometimes are short parts because they just dont exist yet, but that is quickly fixed. Yes, the parts money is low when you are off deployment cycle here too, but we just CAN jets until the money starts flowing again during workups/deployment/sustain. I guess it’s the same idea, but in a 10-12 jet squadron, you can usually count on at least half of them being flyers during the down cycle. We dont ever chop into an area on deployment that gives us more money. Our money always comes from the same place, it is just metered. Sounds wild about the send a plane to the sandbox on deployment to get fixed mindset. WTF do pilots do in the in between? Are these just broken jets/helos, or are they at least airworthy and PMC?
 
///AMG said:
Man, Air Force (and i guess Army) sounds bananas. We sometimes are short parts because they just dont exist yet, but that is quickly fixed. Yes, the parts money is low when you are off deployment cycle here too, but we just CAN jets until the money starts flowing again during workups/deployment/sustain. I guess it’s the same idea, but in a 10-12 jet squadron, you can usually count on at least half of them being flyers during the down cycle. We dont ever chop into an area on deployment that gives us more money. Our money always comes from the same place, it is just metered. Sounds wild about the send a plane to the sandbox on deployment to get fixed mindset. WTF do pilots do in the in between? Are these just broken jets/helos, or are they at least airworthy and PMC?
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Honestly it seems like one of those, “nobody takes care of your stuff like you do,” mindsets.

During the heavy lifting part of GWOT in a 25-30 aircraft task force you’d have anywhere up to 5 phases running at a time. The task force would only have the organic capacity to do 1, maybe 2. So the other 3 would always get shunted off to the aviation support battalion or to a contractor brought in at one of the major hubs like Kandahar.

The ASB and Contractors never did the quality of work expected but since you needed that aircraft back to continue to make mission it was pencil whipped and then you’d get it back to its owner who would get the stuff found on inspection fixed. Years of that go on, now it’s just the “standard.” The further corrosive nature to that already bad problem though is that the units that used to be staffed up and could handle getting it to fixed are now manned at 50-60% strength and bottom heavy on experience due to erosion of year groups that should all now be E6/7s providing that on hand apprenticeship. So we can’t fix our broken stuff and it continues to operate broken and now an even more F’d up standard is made.


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///AMG said:
Man, Air Force (and i guess Army) sounds bananas. We sometimes are short parts because they just dont exist yet, but that is quickly fixed. Yes, the parts money is low when you are off deployment cycle here too, but we just CAN jets until the money starts flowing again during workups/deployment/sustain. I guess it’s the same idea, but in a 10-12 jet squadron, you can usually count on at least half of them being flyers during the down cycle. We dont ever chop into an area on deployment that gives us more money. Our money always comes from the same place, it is just metered. Sounds wild about the send a plane to the sandbox on deployment to get fixed mindset. WTF do pilots do in the in between? Are these just broken jets/helos, or are they at least airworthy and PMC?
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They're PMC at home.

The goal for a USAF O-6 AMC MX Officer is to have 8 green tails on the slides for the Monday morning brief in front of the WG/CC at all times, no matter how that happens and even if its not a reality.

It's a different measure of success than USN/USMC which houses MX and OPS in the same squadron, so the game is played differently.

Two different sports really.
 
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You guys are depressing me. But yeah, i think your point about our differences in MX/Ops relationship is probably making this an apples and oranges comparison. In a USN squadron, if I were the Maintenance Officer, I’d go hit up my bud (maybe even my boat roomatte) the Ops Officer, and we’d work out a deal to give MX a no-fly day in exchange for something beneficial to ops/the ready room at a future date (or cash in on a previous period). In house horse trading. I also feel like our ech IV and III commands are apparently much more interested in helping remove hurdles for squadrons who have MX struggling/aircraft struggling. Not the scenario you describe with your wing MO at the CC meeting. Our “Wing CC” regularly reaches out to see what people need, and makes it happen. He’s a good one, obviously, but that is more culturally normal here.
 
///AMG said:
You guys are depressing me. But yeah, i think your point about our differences in MX/Ops relationship is probably making this an apples and oranges comparison. In a USN squadron, if I were the Maintenance Officer, I’d go hit up my bud (maybe even my boat roomatte) the Ops Officer, and we’d work out a deal to give MX a no-fly day in exchange for something beneficial to ops/the ready room at a future date (or cash in on a previous period). In house horse trading. I also feel like our ech IV and III commands are apparently much more interested in helping remove hurdles for squadrons who have MX struggling/aircraft struggling. Not the scenario you describe with your wing MO at the CC meeting. Our “Wing CC” regularly reaches out to see what people need, and makes it happen. He’s a good one, obviously, but that is more culturally normal here.
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Keep in mind you are also a National Asset (I dare you to tell your wife tht sometime).

Kind of like E-4 that might change some stuff compared to other airframes.


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Lawman said:
Keep in mind you are also a National Asset (I dare you to tell your wife tht sometime).

Kind of like E-4 that might change some stuff compared to other airframes.


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That’s true to an extent, but i found the same to be true in the F/A-18 as well
 
///AMG said:
That’s true to an extent, but i found the same to be true in the F/A-18 as well
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I wonder what the value of having a common aircraft across so much of the fleet is worth.

Be interesting to talk to somebody that lived the 80s carrier wing life and could speak to is this how it’s always been.


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