How many Air Force staff does it take to keep an F-16 running?

by philg

I saw a headline last month that read “U.S. sends six F-16s to Turkey.” The next line in the crawl was “Total deployment of 300 Air Force staff.” Thus it would seem that, even when locals are maintaining and securing the airport and hangar, it takes 50 U.S. military personnel to keep a single-engine jet running.

15 thoughts on “How many Air Force staff does it take to keep an F-16 running?”

  1. Keep in mind that it’s staffing to keep the jets operational on a moment’s notice, 24/7. So it’s likely to be 3 or 4 full crews, which makes for a much more reasonable ~12 people per crew per jet (maintenence, support, pilots).

  3. “Low maintenance was not a design goal.”
    …….something in common between the F15 and my wife.

    Oh you’re forgetting the guys who make the doughnuts.

  4. Besides keeping single-engine airframes flying, there are likely other reasonable Air-Force-y things that go along that they are reluctant to outsource: people who maintain classified crypto, EW, optics, nuclear-qualified interlocks, and any lesser ordnance that still calls for extreme care because it is still quite lethal; also likely more than a dozen people dedicated for physical security; also probably other stuff I’ve never heard of or forgotten.

  5. This is one of the reasons that drones are so attractive. The time in the air to time AOG ratio is very different. (I think one of the drones has a diesel engine, the same one in the original Diamond Twinstar.) And I bet the maintenance crew necessary for the little piston engines versus the huge jet engine is very different. Skill set, too.

    Isaac is obviously correct, there’s a crew there 24hrs to keep the jet ready to launch. The drone can be aloft for long enough that I think it can actually eliminate a maintenance shift entirely, so they can kill one third of the wrench monkeys right off the bat.

    Shocking to have a post with no mention of child support. But I bet a good percentage of those 50 per plane are sending quite a bit home to people they had a one night stand with, a huge drag on our military budget.

  7. “A fully staffed patrol should have 59 individuals in the field doing launch and recovery, 45 doing mission control, and 82 working on the data gathered.”

    Well, that was a good figure to have for comparison. Let’s ignore the data gathering element, since that’s the same with the jet (uh, if it gathers any). But the 60 doing launch and recovery must do it for many drones, right?

  8. Colin: http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Tips discusses the ease of targeting active-duty military personnel for family court lawsuits. Here’s an excerpt:

    Attorneys described active-duty military personnel as “sitting ducks” for divorce, custody, and child support plaintiffs. “If you were serving in Iraq for the last year,” noted one lawyer, “how could you possibly show that you were the historical primary caregiver?” Forum shopping is easy for a patient military spouse. If sole custody of children is desired, for example, the future plaintiff can wait for the family to be moved from Arizona (50/50 custody presumption) to Massachusetts or California. If alimony is desired, the future plaintiff can wait for the family to be moved from Texas to Florida. If profitable child support is sought, the future plaintiff can wait for the family to be moved from Nevada to Wisconsin or New York.

    ———–

    If the mother is serving in Turkey for a year with these F-16s, for example, the father can start an affair with a local 22-year-old and then sue the mother for divorce, custody, and child support, arguing that he has been the “primary parent” while the mother is nine timezones away. To the extent that the law is being applied in a gender-neutral fashion in his jurisdiction he should be a slam-dunk winner (exceptions: Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, and a few other states with a 50/50 default)

    If the mother is getting combat pay or a housing allowance in Turkey that will increase the profitability of the father’s child support lawsuit. See http://www.divorcesource.com/ds/florida/calculating-military-divorce-child-support-4631.shtml for example, and http://www.uscg.mil/legal/la/Attorney%20Resources/Child%20Support%20(IRP-Section%201)/Military%20Child%20Support%20Guide.pdf

    If the father can show that he suffered a disabling injury while having sex with the 22-year-old (e.g., “fell off bed; struck head; suffering from headaches and unable to work”) he might also be on track for lifetime or “permanent” alimony, depending on the state.

  9. In fact low (or at least lower) maintenance costs were in fact a design goal of all the post-century series fighters.

    I’m always amused by people who think that an unmanned vehicle might cost less to operate than an equivalent piloted aircraft. The unmanned aircraft unit cost may be less than the manned version, but the unmanned airplane will cost MORE to operate.

    UAVs require a huge communications and monitoring operation not needed for manned airplanes, and they all still have pilots.

    And UAVs crash a lot more than manned airplanes. We would have run out of U-2s decades ago if those hard-to-land airplanes had the landing accident rate of the Air Force’s UAV fleet.

  10. Jim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper shows that the “program cost” for 163 drones (through 2014) was $11.8 billion in 2012 (about $80 million per drone if you assume that not all 163 had been built by 2012) and that the “unit cost” was $17 million in 2013 (this is on top of the “program cost”?).

    The “unit cost” of an F-16 was supposedly $19 million in 1998 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon ).

    It is surprising to see how the numbers are at least in the same ballpark, though of course the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II is an out-of-the-stadium home run in terms of spending…

  11. > It is surprising to see how the numbers are at least in the same ballpark
    Why is this surprising? Presumably, drones are priced to maximize profits: the difference from the primary alternative should be slightly higher than the perceived benefit, namely the pilot’s life.

  12. The local Air Combat Command (Tyndall AFB, FL) has deployed four F-22’s to Europe. The press release said the aircraft were ferried with tanker refueling en route, and the 60 additional personnel and equipment went in one C-17. I got the impression this is more of a demo than a battle ready deployment.

  13. I heard of 6 F-22s being “paraded” from Estonia in the Baltic through NATO Poland etc down to Romania for a week at each place, but perhaps there are more than one such “USAAF demo squadron” now in Europe demonstrating the U.S. resolve in the face of ever more aggressive Putin’s Russia. The ground support crew went unmentioned, for which I assume they receive special pecuniary feelgood compensation. (ObChildSupContent: to be bilked of by their USA-side two-timing spouses).

  14. I looked back at the pr, and the story is that 6 embarked but 2 “spares” intentionally turned back after the prime 4 were solidly on the way.

    I’ll just leave it there.

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