US Air Force to retire 250 aircraft and jets

The U.S. Air Force will retire more than 250 aircraft and fighter jets in the next several months, according to a report on Tuesday.

As part of the Combat Air Force Reduction in Forces plan, Hill Air Force Base will send out 12 aircrafts in the next two months and another 12 this fall — making their inventory smaller, but hopefully more lethal.
“As an Air Force, we are going to accelerate the retirement of 259 aircraft,” said Col. David Hathaway with the 388th Fighter Wing unit.

It’s all part of a master plan by the Air force, retiring several F-16s, F-15s and A-10s to save money.

The Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon, the first of the US Air Force multi-role fighter aircraft, is the world’s most prolific fighter with more than 2,000 in service with the USAF. The last of 2,231 F-16 fighters for the US Air Force was delivered in March 2005. The first two-seat F-16D version was accepted by the US Government in January 2009.

More than 1,500 F-15s are in service worldwide with the US Air Force, US Air National Guard and the air forces of Israel, Japan and Saudi Arabia, including over 220 F-15E fighters.

Hathaway added by saying “It frees up $355 million this fiscal year and over the next five fiscal years will free up $3.5 billion, which will allow us to reshape our force into a smaller, leaner, more agile and capable force for the future.”

And though the retiring of these jets will mean the Air Force will have a smaller inventory right now, Hathaway says, “In the long term this makes us more lethal and combat capable, yet smaller force.”

- planenews

NASA started science probe using Global Hawk

NASA has begun putting one of its Global Hawk to work for the first time with flights over vast areas of the Pacific to show the scientific usefulness of the unmanned aircraft.

Global Hawks were designed to perform high-altitude, long-endurance reconnaissance and intelligence missions for the Air Force, which has turned over to NASA three versions built in the developmental process.

“The Global Hawk is a fantastic platform because it gives us expanded access to the atmosphere beyond what we have with piloted aircraft,” said David Fahey, co-mission scientist and a research physicist at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. “We can go to regions we couldn’t reach or go to previously explored regions and study them for extended periods that are impossible with conventional planes.”

Able to carry more than 1,000 pounds of science instruments, a Global Hawk can operate at altitudes up to 65,000 feet and stay aloft for 30 hours while flying a distance of more than 12,600 miles.”This will allow Global Hawks to sample remote regions of the atmosphere such as the equatorial regions of the oceans and the arctic and Antarctic.” Fahey added.

The Global Hawk is effectively a hybrid between a satellite and an aircraft, said Paul Newman, senior scientist in NASA’s Atmospherics, Chemistry and Dynamics Branch at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “This plane naturally flies in the stratosphere, so it’s a perfect platform for ozone-depletion science,”Newman said..

Acquisition of the Global Hawks marks the latest conversion of military technology to civilian use by NASA.The space agency, for example, flies a converted high-altitude U-2 spy plane that has been redesignated ER-2, and a Predator B unmanned aircraft that has been given the Native American name Ikhana. In the 1990s, NASA used two Air Force SR-71 Blackbird spy planes for high-speed, high-altitude research.

Source: AP

There is more to aviation than just paper airplanes

You might be surprised that there are really cool facts about airplanes, jets , helicopters and rockets! Each aircraft tells a different story of missions, heroism and victory.

How fast can the fastest plane go?

Reposted from Answers.com

Air Speed Records depending on the type of aircraft:

Manned airbreathing jet aircraft: Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird — 3,530 km/h (2,194 mph), set in 1976

Unmanned Air-launched hypersonic scramjet: NASA X-43A –12,144 km/h (7,546 mph), set in 2004

Manned Air-launched jet aircraft (incapable of breathing air): North American X-15, 7,274 km/h (4,520 mph), set in 1967.

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