December 10, 2018 | International, Aerospace
By: Mark D. Faram
The Navy will deactivate the Grim Reapers of Strike Fighter Squadron 101, consolidating all Joint Strike Fighter operations and training at California's Naval Air Station Lemoore, officials confirmed on Friday.
The squadron has been based at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. It was reactivated in 2012 as the Navy's initial F-35C fleet replacement squadron. At the time, the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force Joint Strike Fighter replacement squadrons were located there as well.
The move of the Grim Reapers' 15 aircraft is slated to be effective on July 1, according to OPNAV notice 5400.
“The Navy is moving forward with the deactivation of VFA-101 at Eglin AFB next year, and the re-alignment of F-35C assets into Strike Fighter Squadrons to support VX-9 Detachment Edwards AFB, Air Warfare Development Command (NAWDC) at NAS Fallon and maintain Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) production at VFA-125, while transitioning Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet squadrons to the F-35C Lightning II,” wrote Lt. Travis Callaghan, a Naval Air Forces spokesman, in an email to Navy Times.
The shift to California should see the Grim Reapers' 29 officers and 239 enlisted personnel replace their patches with those of the “Rough Raiders” of Strike Fighter Squadron 125, Lemoore's F-35C replacement squadron.
“This will co-locate the fleet replenishment squadron production of pilots directly into the operational squadrons scheduled for transition to F-35C,” according to a note in the directive ordering the move.
The extra aircraft, pilots and maintainers at Lemoore are expected to help the Pentagon meet its testing and evaluation requirements for the the Navy's first operational fleet F-35C squadron, VFA-147,
That major milestone for the Navy's JSF program is still slated to happen in 2019. The maiden overseas deployment of VFA-147 is anticipated in 2021 while embarked on the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson.
Deactivating VFA-101 wasn't the Navy's original plan.
Officials wanted to move the squadron to Lemoore in early 2017. Then the Navy decided to keep VFA-101 at Eglin and stood up a second training squadron, VFA-125, at Lemoore.
At the time, officials told Navy Times there was “no plan in the foreseeable future for VFA-101 to be stood down” because “the requirement is for two FRS while we are transitioning squadrons.”
The Grim Reapers could be resurrected if the Navy chooses to have an F-35 replacement squadron on both coasts. The OPNAV note requires the Navy to “maintain VFA 101 squadron lineage (name, UIC, insignia, call sign, etc.) for future reactivation.”
But bringing the Grim Reapers back to life likely won't happen for at least a decade. That's because the Navy has yet to start the process of naming a home base for its East Coast F-35Cs. It requires extensive environmental impact studies before senior leaders make the final decision on where the squadrons will go. And that, Navy officials say, isn't expected to start until the mid-2020′s at the earliest.
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September 19, 2018 | International, Aerospace
By: Kyle Rempfer The Air Force has spent the past few years gearing up for a near-peer fight against adversaries with high-end air forces that match their own. While new doctrines and technologies occupy much of the planning for such a shift, another type of preparation is needed: reorganizing wings and squadrons. One possibility on the table is a return to composite wings. In the early 1990s, the Air Force organized the 366th Fighter Wing out of Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, into the service's premier “air intervention” composite wing. For roughly a decade, the wing flew fighters, bombers and tankers with the goal of meeting the challenges of a post-Cold War world order — where conflict could arrive anywhere, anytime. “They were ready to pack up and go fight as a unified team,” Lt. Gen. Mark Kelly, commander of 12th Air Force, told a crowd of Air Force leaders Monday at the 2018 Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Washington, D.C. “But that was disbanded, and part of it came down to money," Kelly said. "The cost per flying hour of trying to sustain the small-fleet dynamics there didn't look great on spreadsheets.” But Kelly argues that financial assessment was faulty. The quality of the training airmen were getting was being compared to the day-to-day operations at other bases around the Air Force. In reality, it was more comparable to the day-to-day training at Red Flag — a two-week, advanced air combat training exercise still held several times a year in Nevada and Alaska. “Frankly, the training they were getting compared more to Red Flag daily ops," Kelly said. “And that would be a good problem to have and a good construct to be able to build.” The Air Force is rethinking how it constructs wings and squadrons, as well as how it deploys airmen, as it shifts to better align with the 2018 National Defense Strategy, according to Kelly. As it stands, “airmen only come together to fight at the line of scrimmage," Kelly said. For instance, before airmen arrive at a forward base to fight against insurgents in Afghanistan, they may have a unified command at the squadron level, but a unified command at the wing level is severely lacking. Additionally, airmen preparing to deploy today benefit from a surplus of “spin-up" time. They know when their unit is scheduled to deploy and have the luxury of training to meet that challenge well in advance. “That's a luxury that we cannot rely on in great power competition,” Kelly said. Organizing some aircraft and airmen into composite wings could provide the training and deployment structure necessary for fights against modern militaries, Kelly said. The composite wing concept was heavily pushed in 1991 by then Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak, according to his biography on the Defense Department's website. McPeak wanted to organize wings by their mission-set, not aircraft type. According to his “air intervention” doctrine, a wing deploying for a near-peer fight should have all the aircraft and airmen it needs to accomplish its mission with limited, or possibly no, outside support. This meant one wing could potentially operate electronic warfare aircraft for the suppression of enemy air defenses, bombers to lay waste to enemy fortifications, fighters to engage in air-to-air combat, and tankers to refuel them all. After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, however, the old composite squadron idea was mostly discarded. The 366th Fighter Wing was restored to fly F-16Js, and the consolidation of the Air Force's KC-135 and B-1 forces led to the reallocation of the wing's bombers and tankers to McConnell AFB, Kansas, and Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, according to Mountain Home's website. But composite wings, and the idea of sustainable fights with more or less autonomous Air Force commanders, is back in vogue. Funding was one of the biggest challenges to composite wings back in the day, but the reasons for that unit structure are better appreciated now as concerns about China and Russia preoccupy defense planners. To fuel a restructuring, steady funding will be key, according to Kelly. He projected the Air Force's shift to great power competition will continue to be a focus of the defense budget into 2021 and 2022. But regardless of the funds Congress ultimately appropriates for the Air Force in the coming years, restructuring for a near-peer fight needs to happen, Kelly said. “This has to happen regardless of if we have the force we have today with only one more airman, or the force we need with tens of thousands more airmen," he added. https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/09/18/bombers-fighters-and-tankers-unite-will-the-air-force-rebuild-composite-wings-to-fight-near-peer-foes