This morning I had a chance to speak to Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, the Twelfth Air Force and Air Forces Southern commander, during the Department of Defense’s weekly Bloggers’ Rountable. The General was kind enough to speak to a half dozen bloggers from across the United States both in person at the Pentagon in Washington DC and via telephone on the hour long conference call.

 

Active readers of my blog may remember the General from my Chile adventure early last year where I covered the FIDAE airshow and NEWEN exercises and how instrumental he was in helping me attain some tremendous access for my blog. Speaking of Chile, when asked about his ongoing relations with the emerging economic country, I was informed that bonds are being strengthened with ongoing missions and exercised such as “Salitre,” , the State Partnership Program and Operation Southern Partner.

 

“Salitre” is a multinational air combat training exercise in Latin America hosted by the Chilean Air Force along with US aircraft from Mt. Home AFB and JRB New Orleans. The exercise hopes to expand to include aircraft from Argentina, Brazil, and Peru.

“We try to make it a true multinational exercise and bring all the benefits of engaging with numerous air forces when it comes to sharing tactic, techniques and procedures…things that are all common to all airman that have slipped the surly bonds.” said Gen. Seip.

Top bloggers from the industry then inquired about the status of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, referring to the Air Forces’ MQ-1 Predetor and MQ-9 Reaper. One interesting thing the General brought up was that within the next five years, there will be more UAV’s flying then manned aircraft. Very interesting indeed. Currently 85% of theUAV’s are in the Military Area of Responsibility (Iraq and Afghanistan) while the remaining 15% remain at home for the Schoolhouse to use for training and to perform R&D on the aircraft.

“…over the period of the next five years [the USAF will] fly more unmanned vehicles than we will fly manned vehicles. So I think that makes a very pointed statement about our commitment to the future of UAV’s and what it brings to the fight in meeting the demand for the requirements of the combatant commanders our there. ” the General stated.

When asked about the rise in UAV programs by other countries and if they were a major concern, the General replied “a lot of very smart captains and majors” are working on these issues.

MQ-1 Predator:

MQ-9 Reaper:

 

Also discussed was the status of the A-10 Thunderbolt‘s wing crack issue. Over 30 years old, this workhorse of the Air Force is suffering from breaks in both wings near the center panels of the landing gear trunnions.

With nearly half of the 350+ A-10‘s in the fleet grounded, the General cited hard work by both uniformed and non uniformed personnel has finally turned the tide and a majority of the planes are back to flying condition with the entire fleet to be up by June ’09. Their current status stands at:

Thick Winged A-10′s (the newer models)

31% are Grounded

46% are Flying

23% are in Flyable condition but still need to be thoroughly inspected.

 

Thin Winged A-10′s (the older models)

40% are Grounded

41% are Flying

9% are in Flyable condition but still need to be thoroughly inspected.

 

 A full transcript of the call as well as an mp3 can be found on the DOD website: http://www.defenselink.mil/blogger/index.aspx

 

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Adventures, Bloggers Roundtable, Life, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.