EGLIN AFB — The limbo in which Eglin Air Force Base’s Joint Strike Fighter training school has been operating since it opened its doors has been extended.
The Air Force plans to reassess the impact of F-35 flight training and has postponed until 2013 at the earliest any decision on where the flight training will take place and which runways will be used.
Friday, January 6, 2012
USAF--F-35 pilot training decision 2013 at the earliest?
The reason for the question mark is that this is the only newspaper with the story. Do the words below mean that a decision on when F-35 flight training will begin will not happen until 2013; at the earliest? The USAF was after all the decision maker on this. The reason F-35 pilot training has not started thus far are technical problems with the jet such as unsafe fuel dumping, lightning issues and some other things.
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2 comments:
This newspaper article only refers to the environment assessment for where & how training flight ops for the F-35 will be flown on the Eglin AFB complex. The original Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS, Oct 2008) was superceded by the Supplemental Environment Impact Statement (SEIS, Sep 2010), which is now to be superceded by the Updated SEIS. The Updated SEIS has been delayed getting started because all three Services had to approve the new training flight ops plans. The AF now says the updated SEIS will be finished for Fall 2012 public review and a possible Spring 2013 Pentagon ROD selection of the exact site on Eglin for its base of F-35 operations. This process is completely divorced from technical problems (and their solutions) of the F-35 itself and, given a possible flight clearance approval at some point before the Spring 2013 time frame, training flight ops could begin (subject to some restrictions in use of specific runways).
Addendum to my 1st comment: The multiple Eglin Environmental Impact Statements (FEIS, SEIS, Updated SEIS) are attempts find a suitable solution to operating an extremely noisy F-35 aircraft in high ops tempo training mode without exceeding FAA noise standards (very much) in neighboring communities.
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