[protoconservative]

“Engine fires...a pattern? Sabotage comes to mind...or seriously incompetent maintenance crews.”

Slow down.

All of us who work high pressure Jet Fuel or Kerosene burring equipment know the hoses and seals wear out and leak from the out side in places one cannot visually inspect. The vibration level on aircraft is why just about any fastener is safety wired or marked so it be seen when it rattle out. Jets are not Kenworths or Deere you cannot fire them up and just let them run for 2 hours in the parking log to confirm nothing leaks. They pressize systems and let them sit for 15 minutes to see what happens, but the vibrations of a cat shot and a trap need a cat shot and a trap. We have 1000 19 to 23 year olds keeping about 70 aircraft flying at an operational pace land based units do not match. In the work up part of a carrier cruise the aircraft and deck equipment have generally just been overhauled, and then they are put in the most dificult enviroment other than launch to space, for 200 to 400 days strait. We are at the point even the F35s are returning from the service depot after significant overhauls. The engines on modern jet fighters are replaced for maintiance issues at least once every 300 hours, treated as a LRU (line replaceable unit), same a 1980s car radio. A fighter squadron deploys to a ship for a 9-18 month cruise. Every aircraft has at least one engine or major system it did not start the crusie with, replaced by NCOs with one very green officer “supervising”.

Lets remember what the hell is going on when a Supercarrier is workign up for a cruise or on station someplace interesting. Take a modern small city airport, drive it through a huricane, send it to pre war status, move it 20,000 miles on the ocean and manage it with just about 96% of people on board under the age of 25. Add nuclear weapons in the lockers, add explosives, add jet fuel, add a nuclear reactor supplied by the lowest bidder.

That one supercarrier does not burn to the waterline every decade is because of dedicated souls doing the best they can with the equipment and training supplied. There may be navy officers whos futures get remarkable changed over a rash of incidents, but that is typically a stememic human systems problem and not the poor kids inspecting aircraft before being rolled onto the lift.

Thirty Woke Training hours per year is not the problem for the kids, complexity of flying machines is a real problem. Lets not discount their task.

[SakoL61R]

Well said, protonconservative. I’ll concur with my 3+ decades of military aviation service.

[Roccus]

Outstanding!

[golux]

Your post is wise, informative, and worth reading carefully.

Let us not, however, discount the handicapping effect, particularly on young minds, of a full court press, in training, on matters that have nothing at all to do with systems or operational readiness.

To that, add a gamut of flag officers chosen not for their ability to lead sailors, but preciselyfor their inability to select the correct head in which to take a piss.

[TalBlack]

Lets not discount their task.“””

Exactly. Once the formidability of their task required that the Navy profile out the best person to participate in that task and get as many of them on line as they possibly could. But that ain’t the way it works anymore. “Woke” isn’t just 30 hours of training somewhere. A flightdeck force of the best-suited by experience based profiling wouldn’t be even remotely close to looking properly woke. Gender skin color and sexual deviation are as important to todays military as doing the best that they possibly could once was.

[wiley]

Let’s add that fighter pilots put their planes through high stress maneuvers that other aircraft are not put through. That takes a toll on engines.

I also wouldn’t discount the possibility of FOD (Foreign Object Debris/Damage).

[mdmathis6]

When you have a pattern of mishaps and fires occuring over a short period of time when they weren’t happening before in such rapid sequence you have to think incompetence or deliberate sabotage. Probably more the former vs the latter exacerbated by the extended operations mission the battle group has been a part of since August. The weak links are showing themselves.

[tomkat]

An excellent post, with much to bear in mind - some remarkable kids out there every day, all the bullshit notwithstanding.

[Arlis]

Great response. Those who don’t fly don’t know the incredible complexity of today’s planes, and fighter jets are the most complex of all.

Nothing made by humans is perfect because humans aren’t perfect. Things break and wear out. Preventative maintenance minimizes breakage, but it cannot prevent it.

I grew up flying, uncle a WWII Navy pilot, father a pilot who was Navy officer, son a Navy MH-60 pilot.

Thank you for your post.

[Candor7]

Thank you for the accurate picture.

[Pelham]

ping