Especially Military Aviation

2004 was an interesting year from the standpoint of those interested in present, or historical, military aviation. We had an ongoing war, some aircraft to Hail and Farewell, and an anniversary of considerable interest.

The anniversary? The most durable aircraft in the US inventory celebrated its golden jubilee. The C-130 HERCULES first took to the air in August, 1954, and to the astonishment of all, Lockheed Martin is still building them. Not many other military planes are still serving in their design role 50 years after first flight -- India's MiG-21s, a variety of DC-3s, the venerable B-52. But none of those are still coming off the line. So you could do worse than think of 2004 as The Year of the Herc.

Aviation In The War

In the war, fixed and rotary wing combat aviation were vital, if often unsung, contributors to the Global War On Terrorism (GWOT in Pentagon acronyms) in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

With the end of major combat operations in Iraq, the war there became what the war in Afghanistan had been -- a counter guerilla campaign with fast-movers under ground control, and attack helicopters, duking it out with scattered insurgent bands. The insurgents for their part tried to avoid the attentions of JDAM-toting jets and heavily-armed helicopters, and take shots at unarmed transport aircraft with a dwindling stock of Soviet-made man-portable missiles.

The dangers of aircraft operations in the war didn't stop with the guys shooting at you -- several military aircraft and a contractor-operated CASA 212 were lost in accidents this year. The Afghan and Iraqi theaters of operation offer harsh conditions and difficult flying.

New Fieldings, US and Abroad

The SAAB Gripen continued to succeed with both NATO and neutral nations. In these deals, it's only partly about the planes: it's mostly about the Benjamins, and Lockheed Martin sales people grouse about unfair business practices, or a deck stacked against their F-16. The Eurofighter Typhoon doesn't seem to have much appeal beyond those nations that have been committed to the advanced warplane from the very beginning, France, England and Germany. Going into 2005, the weakness of the US dollar is a cloud with a silver lining for Lockheed Martin, as it makes the American plane far more competitive.

The poor nations of the world continue to turn to Russia and China for aircraft. These machines are also designed from the beginning for simple field maintenance. Maintenance is always a problem with poor nations, especially those who rely heavily on conscripted soldiers to maintain their machinery.

The F-35 program sounds quiet, but it proceeds apace. Big news in 2004 was the USAF indicating that it wanted to buy a significant number of the STOVL variant. The USAF is desperate to get rid of its A-10s, but the USAF's customer for close air support -- the Army -- doesn't want to see this capability vanish. The entire F-35 multinational, multiservice program has a long and arduous budgetary road ahead. While it will certainly be a newsmaker in the coming year and years ahead, it may not field for ten years -- if at all.

The F-22 is somewhat more imperiled by a restive Congress looking to fund operations: its unit cost of $133.3 million makes it the juiciest of targets. The world-beating stealth/supercruise fighter is in low-rate production and undergoing test and evaluation at Edwards AFB, and may reach Initial Operational Capability by the end of 2005 (the first unit will be at Langley AFB in Virginia). There also has been a first F-22 Class A (in fact, Hull Loss) accident, on December 22, about which the USAF is not saying much. The pilot ejected and was unhurt. In the last days of December, the USAF cut its request for F-22s, probably trying to get in front of the parade to minimize the effect of cuts. Of course, the already unimaginably high cost of the F-22 is largely the result of collapsed economies of scale, as the buy keeps getting cut back, and fewer and fewer tail numbers bear the burden of the huge R&D costs.

Some of the most interesting developments have a crew of zero. But you probably wouldn't want to pilot a mid-course interceptor. That's because it's a missile designed to protect the nation, or an ally, or a naval force at sea, from incoming ballistic missiles; it destroys the missiles by colliding with them. This is a response to the threat posed by the disturbing proliferation of missile technology, and nuclear and other highly threatening warheads. The Army has one system located in Alaska and California that is nearing an initial limited capability; the missiles are based on Patriot technology, but are fired from fixed silos. The Navy has another system based on an improved Standard missile. Tests so far are mixed. A boost-phase capability will not rely on missiles, but on a manned aircraft that fires a huge laser; that is in testing now.

Also in the zero-crew mode are the proliferating unmanned aerial vehicles (called "uninhabited" by the terminally PC). Most of these are used for what the military now calls RSTA: Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition. A combat capability has been slow in coming, first for the RQ-1A Predator drone. Predictions for the Boeing Joint Unmanned Combat Air System have many armchair analysts saying that the F-35 will be America's last combat aircraft. Two X-45A technology demonstrators have taken some baby steps in this direction, and a larger X-4C is under construction. Of course, a British White Paper has already said that the day of the manned aircraft is done, and future wars will be fought by robotic aircraft and missiles. That White Paper might have been a bit premature: Defence Minister Duncan Sandys issued it in 1957.

Retirements

It was the end of the line for a lot of military aircraft worldwide, including one of the longest serving: Meteor WK600 was the last single-seater Gloster Meteor in service, operated as a drone or manned radar-target in the UK by a contractor on behalf of MOD. But under a previous serial number t had served in the Korean war. For whatever reason (bad aim?) it never joined its contemporaries at the bottom of the North Sea after drone conversion. The type had a sixty-year history with the RAF, and this example had 50-plus of them.

Another military icon that took retirement in 2004 was the Lockheed F-104. An airplane that served for decades worldwide, yet only managed relatively brief and inconclusive involvements in small wars. Instead, it kept the peace throughout the cold war -- I well recall huddling on Alpine mountaintops and watching F-104Gs snake through the valleys below. The airplane managed fifty years of service to the day, from first flight in 1954 to last flight of Italy's F-104S models on October 31, 2004.

With those old veterans going into honorably-deserved retirement to museums, it's somewhat expected. They did their duty, and then some. But it's a shock to think that the F-14, the last of a long line of naval fighters to bear the Grumman name, embarked on its last combat cruise in 2004 (It's not officially retired yet. It's still out there).

F-14s will probably fly in some capacity or the other into 2006, but the machine's days as a frontline fighter are winding down. It doesn't seem that old, and it isn't, quite: its design dates from the collapse of the ill-considered F-111B project in the 1960s, and it was fielded in 1973. Perhaps some will linger on for special purposes (like that last single-seat Meteor did in Britain). You will never get one to admit it, but many Naval Aviators serving today first caught the bug from Top Gun, the hokey Tom Cruise movie, where the feisty Tomcat stole the screen from Cruise (who is a licensed pilot himself; I wonder if *he* caught the bug then...?)

The F-14 started as a missile carrying interceptor designed to keep enemy swarms away from a carrier battle group, and ended as sophisticated all-weather smart-bombing, LANTIRN-equipped F-14D Bombcats in the desert skies of Afghanistan and Iraq, often hundreds of miles from the open ocean. Old age and more complex maintenance than the F/A-18 C/D added up to a pink slip for the swing-wing fighter, but any crewdog who flew it will tell you, it's retiring undefeated.

Fittingly, one of the ships from which the F-14s took to the skies during the long years of the cold war, USS Midway, was retired to a new home as a museum in San Diego. With an F-14 on her deck for all time.

Rotary Wing Developments

In the US, the big news wasn't the Osprey, to the relief of all involved in the V-22 fielding. An appearance on the front pages for that program usually means a disaster has happened, but no disaster did this year, and the type moved closer to fielding by the USMC and USAF special operations. One of the most significant milestones the shipboard suitability qualification of the Marines' first Osprey unit. Other important tests wrung out the Osprey's aerial-refueling capability, and its suitability for desert environments. About two dozen of the machines have been built so far, which will reach initial operating capability with the Marines in the coming year, and with USAF Special Operations as early as 2006. In coming years, more and more of us will see the eerie sight of the machine passing us in the sky, its massive blades turning slowly, majestically.

Worldwide, the Sikorsky S-92 fought against the Agusta-Westland EH101 over the medium transport market niche currently filled by aging Sea Kings, H-53s, and Pumas. It's too early to declare an overall winner, and the market may be large enough to allow both machines to survive. In most nations the battle is less about the relative merits of the two aircraft, and more about internal politics. Canada, for example, has chosen both machines at different times, but hasn't actually taken delivery of any, and Canadian rotor jocks aren't holding their breath.

The casualty of 2004 was the Army's Comanche reconnaissance/attack helicopter (below). The Army never articulated clearly its need for this machine, designed to fight against a sophisticated Western enemy at a time when most of the nations that would meet that description are allied with the USA to one extent or another in the battle against terrorism. And the high cost of the highly capable Comanche was a budgetary plum too ripe to escape plucking. The money will be used instead to replace obsolete machines like Hueys, that had been expected to soldier on for decades in the National Guard. The Army is also talking about a fixed-wing transport for light intra-theater airlift. The Army once owned a fleet of DHC-4 Caribous (C-7A and C-7B in US nomenclature) but gave them up to the Air Force, which over the years has neglected the mission the 'Bous once handled.

Historical Military Aviation

Historical military aviation moved forward substantially in 2004, with some long-silent types taking to the air again (FW190, Me262, Curtiss P-36, Lavochkin) or at least getting close (Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa --"Oscar" -- was in taxi testing). The FW190 project of German-based Flug Werk is in production with 12 airframes, 10 of which have been sold already. The first production machine has been making test flights from Manching Air Base. The aircraft are as close as possible to WWII machines, with some substitutions required, but some original parts reused. They have serial numbers that follow on from wartime production.

Some machines which had been grounded moved closer to flight. Lefty Gardner's P-38, White Lightnin' - N25Y, which was a fixture at airshows before its June 25, 2001 inflight fire led to a forced landing with substantial damage, has been bought by European-based Red Bull Flyers and will now be fully restored to flying condition by Nelson Ezell. The above-mentioned Me262 was itself recovering  from a serious groundloop.

Important types that saw their numbers grow in 2004 included B-17, where Tom Reilly finished a long restoration, Corsair, Spitfire, and Mustang, all of which had multiple examples take to the air.

Russia continues to yield a bounty of Axis and Allied types in solid, restorable condition from the stillness of her cold lakes.

And, as is always the case at year's end, some machines -- and lives --have been lost. One heartbreaker was the loss of Don Hinz in the Redtail P-51C due to -- of all things -- a bad key on a magneto drive gear, in Red Wing, MN on Memorial Day weekend. Hinz's family, the CAF, and the Tuskeegee Airmen have vowed to rebuild the machine. A CAF C-60 (Lockheed Lodestar) appears to have fallen victim to flying-speed and directional-control problems resulting from a downwind takeoff -- the crew fortunately escaped the postcrash fire. And the annual NTSB reports have the usual crop of T-6 and T-28 mishaps: three each.

The situation with historic jets has been less positive. The FAA bungled a replacement of Letters of Authorization with type ratings on the Airman Certificate. Ironically, for those of us that think the FAA is a gigantic, faceless bureaucracy, the problem was that it was one man's project, and he was laid low by a serious illness. The system is working better now, or maybe the pilots are getting used to it -- the grousing has gone down, anyway.

Considering the hours flown, historic jets remain a risky subset of flying.  George Cambron (below) died in his MiG-17 in New Mexico on March 25, enroute to an air show. A runway overrun accident in May seriously damaged a Lockheed TV-2 Navy trainer, but no one was injured in that mishap.

A Sense Of The Year As A Whole

On the whole, 2004 was quite a positive year for military aviation worldwide. There have been no great air-to-air battles, no bombing of cities, no use of planes by terrorists (although there are some disturbing tales of laser interference, as we go to press). Despite the pressures of a war in which the US and many allied nations have been involved, flight safety continues incremental improvement, driven in part by the better technology and technical reliability of new equipment. New machines continue to replace old, and old machines continue to impress their fans at air shows and in museums.

FMI: www.defenselink.mil