your opinion?
Col. Warden: Yes. On balance, I think we achieved just about exactly what we wanted. For me, though, the really gratifying thing is that we achieved such momentous results with so little blood shed on
Today, both General Horner and Colonel Warden are looking forward to their lives after military service. After the war, Chuck Horner was promoted to general (four stars), and took over the unified U.S. Space Command at Colorado Springs, Colorado. There, he handled a variety of tasks, including the direction of the North American Air Defense Command, as well as working on ballistic missile defenses. Following his retirement in the summer of 1994, he and his wife Mary Jo have settled in Florida, where he is writing his own memoirs of the 1990/1991 Persian Gulf Crisis/War. Colonel Warden has finished his career with one of the most satisfying appointments he could have imagined, commandant of the Air Command and Staff College at the USAF Air University, located at Maxwell AFB, Alabama. There he has transformed the curriculum, emphasizing air campaign planning for joint service and international students from all over the world. He will retire from the Air Force in the summer of 1995. Arguably, he has become the Clausewitz or Alfred Thayer Mahan of airpower, having codified the use of airpower in
Combat Aircraft
What is a 'classic'? The term has become overused, its meaning fuzzy. Perhaps the best definition I've heard goes something like this: 'I can't tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.' When you talk to the people who fly and maintain today's fleet of U.S. Air Force aircraft, they use the word classic a lot. There's a reason: Every USAF fighter, bomber, and support aircraft in service is a classic, because it has to be. It takes so much time, money, and effort to produce a combat aircraft these days, anything less than a roaring success is going to be a disaster for everyone concerned. Every new combat aircraft must be an instant classic, capable of vastly outperforming the plane or planes it was designed to replace. This chapter will help you get to know some of the classic aircraft programs of recent years.
Today, when a military service commits to fund an aircraft program, and a company chooses to jump in and build that airplane, both are literally 'betting the farm,' with severe consequences for both if the program fails. Given the risks involved, it is amazing that anyone wants to be in the aircraft business at all — but the payoffs of a successful program can be immense for a company, its stockholders, the surrounding communities, and the military service that takes delivery of the final product.
In order to spread their cost over as long a period as possible, modern aircraft tend to have extremely long service lives. For example, the Boeing KC-135 first came into USAF service in the late 1950s, and is planned to be retired in the later 2020s, a run of over sixty years! Even longer lived is the truly classic C-130 Hercules, which first flew just after the Korean War. A new version (the C-130J) is being built right now for use into the middle of the next century by the USAF, as well as by Great Britain and Australia.
The gestation period of a modern aircraft may take as long as fifteen years from first specification to squadron service. And there may be several generations of production models built, with up to twenty-five years of total production. If this period seems long, consider the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. It was first designed in the late 1960s, went into production in the mid-1970s, and has remained in continuous production ever since. Given the current backlog of orders to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and other possible production orders, the third-generation Eagle variants will be in production and in service for over twenty-five years, until approximately 2015 to 2020.
So read on, and get to know some of the classic aircraft being flown by the USAF, now and in the future.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS F-15 EAGLE
In July 1967 at Domodedovo Airport, outside Moscow, the Soviet Air Force proudly unveiled a new aircraft to the world press, the Ye-266/MiG-25. Nomenclature rules used by Western intelligence agencies specified that all 'threat' fighter types got names starting with the letter F; so the MiG-25 was called 'Foxbat.' Like its namesake, the world's largest flying mammal, this new plane was a beast with remarkable sensors, sharp teeth, and impressive performance. It quickly established several new world records for altitude, speed, rate-of-climb, and time-to- altitude, all important measures of a fighter's capability in combat. The best contemporary American fighter of the time, the McDonnell F-4 Phantom, was clearly outclassed; and the U.S. Air Force launched a competition to design a plane that could surpass the Russian achievement. This program became even more vital when you consider that the same airshow had seen the rollout of the MiG-23/27 Flogger-series aircraft, and a number of other impressive Soviet fighters as well. Quickly, the USAF produced a specification for what they called the Fighter Experimental (FX). Several manufacturers competed for the FX contract, which eventually went to McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis. The contract was awarded in December 1969, and the first F-15, dubbed the 'Eagle,' was rolled out on June 26th, 1972. By the end of 1975, operations of the first F-15 training squadron at Luke AFB, the famous 555th 'Triple Nickel,' were in full swing; and the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) at Langley AFB, Virginia, was fully equipped with its cadre of the new birds. There were 361 F-15A fighters and 58 combat-capable F-15B trainers produced before the improved — C and — D models went into production in 1979. In early 1995 the Air Force operated about twenty squadrons of F-15s, including five Reserve and National Guard squadrons.
The designers at McDonnell Aircraft produced a 40,000 lb./18,181 kg., 'no-compromise' air superiority fighter that, superficially, resembled the Foxbat, with huge, boxy air intakes, large wing area, and tall twin tail fins. The exterior is covered with access panels, most at shoulder level for easy access without the need for work stands. The structure made extensive use of titanium (stronger than steel) for the wing spars and engine bay, and limited use of advanced boron fiber (non-metallic) composite materials in the tail surfaces. Stainless steel is found mainly in the landing gear struts, and the skin is primarily made of aircraft-grade aluminum. By comparison, the Foxbat used heavy steel alloys throughout the airframe. This imposed a huge weight penalty on the Soviet machine. In case you wonder about the strength of the American bird, consider that McDonnell Douglas's F-15 test airframe has completed over eighteen thousand hours of simulated flight, which represents a potential service life of fifty-three years, based on a flight schedule of three hundred hours per year.
According to the original FX design guidelines, the aircraft was to be a pure air-superiority fighter—'not a pound for air-to-ground.' Earlier designs like the F-4 Phantom and F-105 Thunderchief had traded off air-to-air performance for a multi-role 'fighter-bomber' capability, and this often put them at a fatal disadvantage against the more agile Soviet MiGs, such as those that they encountered over North Vietnam. (Later, as it happened, the Strike Eagle derivative of the F-15 became one of the great air-to-ground combat aircraft of all time.)
The F-15 used the very advanced Pratt and Whitney F100-PW-100 turbofan, which pushed then-existing technology to the limits. The 17,600lb./ 8,000 kg. thrust J-79 engine, for example, two of which powered the F-4 Phantom, had a turbine inlet temperature of 2,035degF/1,113degC, while the F-100-PW-100 turbine inlet can
