“Mature” fighters—those long since fully developed, and with a logistics train well established—are expected to turn in a mission capable rate of about 70 percent. Lt. Col. Dirk Smith, 94th FS commander, said his Raptors are achieving MC rates of just under that figure … and that includes maintenance on low-observable surfaces, which typically are a headache. Such reliability in a nearly new fighter is unprecedented. In Alaska earlier this year, the goal was to fly every Raptor pilot at least 10 times in mock combat. Smith said that everybody got “12 to 13 times or more.”
The U.S. military announced Dec. 6 that it is standing down its entire fleet of Ospreys after eight Airmen were killed in a crash. The Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy are all standing down Osprey operations after an Air Force Special Operations Command CV-22 crashed off the coast of…