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Twenty-four Prowlers will be pulled for repairs
Twenty-four EA-6B Prowlers will be pulled from service and repaired in the next few months due to growing fatigue in the radar-jamming jets’ wing center sections, adding to the 19 that were grounded late in September, the Navy announced Oct. 31. In addition, the Navy plans to disestablish one of its four expeditionary Prowler squadrons. (For subscribers)

Thats a huge chunk of the 120 some left in service. Aircraft are wearing out far in advance of the time estimated. Mainly because flight hours are off the chart Im lead to believe. Ill post more when it becomes available.

they're trying to quickly upgrade a few F/A-18Fs to a minimum jamming capability to stop gap till the EF-18G Growler becomes available.

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

So Ive heard. But dont have any details on schedule or capabilities. But will keep looking.

[quote]
Top News
Twenty-four Prowlers will be pulled for repairs
Twenty-four EA-6B Prowlers will be pulled from service and repaired in the next few months due to growing fatigue in the radar-jamming jets’ wing center sections, --------

Yup, a known problem and the kept avoiding it by NOT spending bucks at the depot. Tis reason when we had the A-6E discussion, I knew those puppies were being parked. Depot level maintenance ain't sexy and in reality not that expensive.

At the nut, bolt and depot level arena. You seldom see any dog and pony shows showing off what they can do for Congress or heavy Admirals.

I use to fly some hurting birds for one time ferry flights. Engineers gave the birds a God Bless. Moi avoided bumpy air as much as possible.

At the depots use to talk to the engineers and worker bees. Found out that piss is really nasty on alumnium. Replacing some of those stringers could be costly and very labor intensive.

Several times gave them some taxi rides in a Herc or whatever. It was really frowned upon flying them. Otherwise would had. Always let em check out the cockpit and take a nice gander at what we did up front.

If I was driving a passenger bird, normally checked out Base Ops to see if any service member needed a ride near my route. More than a few had no idea that I would inflight divert to drop them off as close to their home as possible. Those flights never appeared on my logs. Good for them and kept me awake with a new field or approach. Rank didn't matter either.

Gotta know how to play the game.

Jack

LOL EZYJACK you never fail to amaze me.

[quote]
LOL EZYJACK you never fail to amaze me.
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Thanks. I might add flew my Dad a few times too. He was legal even as being a retiree from the Army Reseves. The real notable time was dropping him off at a Marine Base. My dumb ass Marine sister was getting married there. My landing light was dangling. This is not good, because this flight wasn't in my log books. As I was on my knees, to my FE, please fix this SOB, because they will never ever understand me being broke here. Very good Chief, he fixed it.

I even flew with a future Master Chief of the Navy. He was a pretty good stick. MCPO Duane Bushey in the mid to late 80s. Probably blew the spelling, but he was very good and most excellent at navigation. Excellent people skills too. In VRF-31, we had 2 MCPOs and a dozen odd Senior Chiefs. My normal enlisted crew was an E6.5. We had the best and they had to audtion. O man they had some great sea stories.

Jack

I know that guy from somewhere. LOL Its a small world. My old man served on the Whisky during Korea. When I joined in 76 everyone thought I was nuts. My Dad never said a word, of course he never had to. It was the right thing to do and therefore didnt need discussion.
For him life was simple. Do the right thing and that was the end of it. You didnt get questioned for it and neither did you get praised for it. But then I could I always tell by his eyes. My daughter says the same thing to me , of course, I would never or ever was that bold with my Dad. Although he wasnt always convinced that submarines were the place to be!!! LOL How I miss that SOB. And so its now a compliment when someone says that I am too. LOL How the worm turns over time!!!!

And like everyone doesnt know that enlisted people actually run the services? That used to be our job anyway. Gives the Officers more time to play or plan to play John Wayne!!! LOL



Edited by - rickusn on Oct 31 2003 8:20 PM

Edited by - rickusn on Oct 31 2003 8:23 PM

We had guys like EZ jack in the Army too. Interesting Characters, to say the least.

<img src="http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/sigs/snipersig.jpg " border=0>

[quote]
We had guys like EZ jack in the Army too. Interesting Characters, to say the least.

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Moi still hit the hot towns for babes for my RONs.

I use to take a crew vote when I was TranPacing back to the States. I was so jaded by then I didn't care if we went the Southern route which was a day or so longer and we hit Hono. Or the shorter and actually not bad liberty going the Northern route through Alaska. I didn't vote either. What's an extra 50,000 lbs of JP or so, ROFL.

They always voted for the Hono route and the babes. Worked for me. Only bad stop on that route was Kwaj. 4,000 odd guys and 50 odd babes. Only trip I did spend 2 nights there. Right after lift off had a blinking fire warning light. Then a call of smoke, feathered the engine and almost fired the bottle. Old Chief FE looked real close and said no fire. Firing the bottle would had meant a much longer stay in Kwaj. Spent the day in the Kwaj heat pulling the cowl and checking for fire. Bad wiring struck again. Pulled out early the next day. Old wiring and old airframes was already biting us in the ass by 78.

Some of the hot little babes in Kwaj were selling their bodies for a nice tidy sum. Kwaj is still famous today as part of NMD testing. Even in those days, they had more radar, rocket sites and electronic crap than Carter has pills.

Once I was feet wet, VRF-31 forgot about us until we hit the mainland.

The Pacific is one helluva of a pond to cross at 300KTAS. I ran those turbines hard.

Jack

Heres the article in its entireity:



October 31, 2003

Twenty-four Prowlers will be pulled for repairs

By David Brown
Times staff writer


Twenty-four EA-6B Prowlers will be pulled from service and repaired in the next few months due to growing fatigue in the radar-jamming jets’ wing center sections, adding to the 19 that were grounded late in September, the Navy announced Oct. 31. In addition, the Navy plans to disestablish one of its four expeditionary Prowler squadrons.
The total number of depot fixes required would temporarily drop the fleet of working Prowlers to 71 by next spring, meaning 40 percent of the Navy’s 119 Prowlers will be out of service. Navy officials plan to reprogram money already approved by Congress in order to restore those 24 aircraft to flying status in two years, said Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Danny Hernandez.

“We’re proactively taking steps to manage this problem so we can optimize available aircraft to support joint and naval requirements,” he said.

When naval aviation officials took the 19 Prowlers out of service Sept. 23, they said at the time that an additional 24 were flyable but were considered the “most fatigued” in the fleet. The plan is to remove 16 of the 24 Prowlers from service in the next two months, replace their wing center sections, then begin a one-for-one replacement in the fleet until all 24 have been repaired in two years. The 24 aircraft have not been grounded, Hernandez said.

The current fleet of flyable 95 Prowlers is broken into: 36 in carrier squadrons; 15 in four Navy expeditionary squadrons; 18 for the Marine Corps; 18 in the fleet replacement squadron; four for the Naval Reserve and four for testing.

When the fleet reaches 71 aircraft by next spring, the Prowlers will be redistributed to: 30 in carrier squadrons; nine in the remaining three Navy expeditionary squadrons; 15 for the Marine Corps; 13 in the fleet replacement squadron; two for the reserves and two for testing.

Hernandez said officials have not decided which Navy expeditionary squadron will be disestablished, or when. When the fleet is back up to 95 flyable in two years, the aircraft that would have gone back to that squadron will be redistributed into the fleet.

Congress this fall, recognizing the critical condition of the U.S. military’s sole tactical radar-jammer, approved $115 million to replace outer-wing panels and wing center sections. The money comes from the 2004 appropriations act and the wartime supplemental. Each Prowler has one wing center section extending from both sides of the fuselage to the wing folds. The outer wing panels — two per aircraft —extend from the wing fold to the wing tip.

“Through strong congressional support, the funding of both the outer wing panels and wing center sections is on track,” Hernandez said.

The Navy plans to phase out the Prowlers and steadily replace them with the EA-18G, a reconfigured F/A-18F Super Hornet. The first EA-18Gs are expected to hit the fleet in 2009. That timetable remains unchanged, Hernandez said.

[quote]
Heres the article in its entireity:



October 31, 2003

Twenty-four Prowlers will be pulled for repairs



Congress this fall, recognizing the critical condition of the U.S. military’s sole tactical radar-jammer, approved $115 million to replace outer-wing panels and wing center sections. --------

This is chump change and they let the suckers go to far into fatigue probably.

Late 70s until the early 80s. Navy/Marine Hercs were picking up new center wing boxes and wings. Dunno how they got away with, we took them in for a wing box change and then later on for new wings. Could had been vice versa, either way it was an extra 60 days of down time. Plus the costs almost doubled. Really stupid and costly. Moi just styled in the extra Herc time especially from our Pacific squadrons and the VRC something at Rota. Add in flight time costs and our lil bitty per diem costs. We never stayed on base 98% of the time. Always at a hotel.

Navy could had upgraded some radios and other goodies at the same time, NNNNNnnnnnoooooooo.

Jack

the AF will go with the EB-52(almost but not quite cinched) the F-35 for escort jamming and they are looking at what you might call close range barrage jamming, sneaking a UAV close in to RADARs and jamming them at almost point blank range.

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.