In their continuous war against the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard, USAF boss General Schwartz and Secretary of the USAF Donley have scored another victory.
Currently there are only a handful of C-130s that can be configured for fire-fighting duties. Efforts to improve the situation look bleak as USAF continues to waste billions each year on the failed F-35.
Using excuses like Operation: USELESS DIRT 1 and 2 or the coming budget sequestration fear-mongering as a cause and future cause are invalid.
Keeping a variety of AF Reserve and Air National Guard special use, convertible C-130's operational is not hard to justify or fund.
*UPDATE* And we just lost one of the configurable USAF C-130s doing fire-fighting ops. Status on crew not certain. Word is three picked up by helicopter.
H/T-War News Updates
3 comments:
The dual role of what's considered low hanging fruit by the present administration leadership was again ignored.
This won't be the last issue like this as the need to cut military funding grows more critical with ever increasing US national debt.
The MAFFS program was supposed to be a backup to the Forest Service's Heavy Airtanker program. It is not a replacement for them. MAFFS equipped aircraft can not be activated until all the heavy airtankers are in use. This wasn't an issue, until the USFS let the fleet of heavy's dwindle from 40 down to 9 in the last decade.
The issue we have with the air tankers is not the doing of USAF, it's the doing of the USFS. They have had study after study done and they have all pretty much said the same thing, and each time the USFS has come up with a reason the study was flawed. The USFS wants a purpose designed heavy air tanker. That is too expensive for limited number of aircraft required.
A couple points: The MAFFS units are owned by the US Forest Service, not the USAF. The company (Aero Union) that made them, recently went out of business, so unless someone picks up the rights to them, no more will be made. The are currently only 8 MAFFS, and 8 MAFFS 2 units available.
The MAFFS units only fit in older C130s, and the MAFFS 2 unit only fit in the J-model C130s. The original models were inefficient when dropping on fires, and had trouble penetrating forest canopy, , and both their available coverage levels make them less versatile than a standard heavy airtanker.
Not quite accurate: There are 9 MAFFS 2 units (9 will be used to replace 7). MAFFS 2 units are mainly used on C-130H aircraft (3 of the 4 Wings assigned the mission are H3), with the California Guard being the only ‘J’. H3 crews flying with MAFFS 2 have been very concerned with the weight of thee units since testing and we are all very interested to see how this could have affected the MAFFS 7 mishap.
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