Aviation Machinist’s Mate Airman Danielle Weakley, assigned to the Golden Eagles of Patrol Squadron (VP) 9, inspects engine three from a P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft as part of the squadron’s advanced readiness program on June 10, 2015. US Navy photo.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Navy’s aviation budget is out of balance for rebuilding readiness among non-deployed units, with more flight hours funded than can be executed due to logistics shortfalls that prevent the service from having enough ready-to-fly airplanes, the Navy’s Air Boss said today.
Though the most visible challenge to aviation readiness is a backlog of legacy F/A-18 Hornets at depots awaiting service life extension work, Commander of Naval Air Forces Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker said some pilots could be flying more if smaller “enabler accounts” – such as those that allow squadrons to buy spare parts ahead of need and pay for contract logistics support – were sufficiently funded.
“We obviously pay attention to the flight hours accounts because that directly translates to readiness,” he said of the budget during a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies co-hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute.
“But what we’ve seen since we’ve come through the heavy-use period and recovering from sequestration, we’ve seen that we’re not able to fully execute those accounts because we don’t have sufficient up airplanes on the flight lines to fly.”
He noted one enabler account in particular, the air systems support account, that “gets at the emergent readiness issues on the flight line,
Article source: https://news.usni.org/2016/08/18/air-boss-budget-needs-fully-fund-spares-readiness-enablers
