Declines in Availability of Super Hornet Fighter Aircraft
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Presentation by Edward G. Keating, CBO’s Deputy Director of National Security, at the 2024 Conference of the Western Economic Association International.
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Declines in Availability of Super Hornet Fighter Aircraft
- 1. Presentation at the 2024 Conference of the Western Economic Association International Edward G. Keating Deputy Director, National Security Division July 1, 2024 Declines in Availability of Super Hornet Fighter Aircraft For more information about the conference, see https://weai.org/conferences/view/14/99th-Annual-Conference. These slides reprise material previously published in Congressional Budget Office, Availability and Use of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Fighter Aircraft (February 2023), www.cbo.gov/publication/58687 and Congressional Budget Office, DECKPLATE and AMSRR: Comparing Two Ways to Measure the Availability of F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Aircraft (July 2023), www.cbo.gov/publication/59098.
- 2. The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Is the Navy’s Most Advanced Nonstealthy Fighter Aircraft
- 3. 2 Percent 0 20 40 60 80 100 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016 2021 Other DoN aircraft F/A-18C/Ds Super Hornets (F/A-18E/Fs) DoN = Department of the Navy. These data are from the Navy’s DECKPLATE data system. CBO Reports Steep Declines in Availability Rates of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and Their Predecessor F/A-18C/D Hornets From 2007 to 2014 An aircraft’s availability rate is the percentage of time it can be flown on training or operational missions.
- 4. 3 Did something befall F/A-18C/Ds and Super Hornets between 2007 and 2014? Availability rates of other DoN aircraft also declined, but not as steeply, and the decline started later. Could the observed decline in availability rates be a measurement issue? In other words, have availability standards become more stringent? Why did Super Hornet availability fall so much comparatively early in the fleet’s life? The Super Hornet fleet is 14 years younger than the F/A-18C/D fleet, on average. The Decline in Availability of F/A-18C/Ds and Super Hornets Raises Many Questions
- 5. 4 In addition to calculating availability by calendar year, we calculate availability by age: § An aircraft’s first month of operation is “Month 0.” The end of an aircraft’s tenth year of operation is “Month 120.” § Any specific calendar month corresponds to different month numbers for different aircraft. § We fit a cubic regression of the form 𝐴𝑣𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 = 𝑎 + 𝑏×𝑀𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ + 𝑐×𝑀𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ! + 𝑑×𝑀𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ" We Additionally Estimate Availability as a Function of Aircraft Age
- 6. 5 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 5 10 15 20 25 Percent Age F/A-18C/Ds Super Hornets (F/A-18E/Fs) Availability Rates of Hornets, by Age We Estimate That a 10-Year-Old Super Hornet Has Roughly the Availability Rate of a 20-Year-Old F/A-18C/D
- 7. 6 When asked about the lower availability of Super Hornets, the Navy noted many contributing factors, including the greater levels of galvanic corrosion arising from the greater use of composite metals in Super Hornets. Another potential factor contributing to the difference in availability is the possibility that funding for maintenance was greater during the period when the F/A-18C/Ds were in their early years than it was during the early years of Super Hornets. Funding differences prompt a consideration of the extent to which declining availability is a function of the vicissitudes of funding choices. We Do Not Know Why Super Hornets Seem to Have Aged More Adversely Than F/A-18C/Ds
- 8. 7 0 20 40 60 80 100 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Percent AMSRR DECKPLATE Annual Availability Rates for the Super Hornet Fleet AMSRR = Aviation Maintenance Supply Readiness Report; DECKPLATE = Decision Knowledge Programming for Logistics Analysis and Technical Evaluation. Adding Complexity to Our Analysis of Availability Are the Different Results Reported by DoN’s Different Systems The Navy’s newer system for tracking the availability of aircraft, AMSRR, shows higher and rising availability rates for Super Hornets. The older system, DECKPLATE, shows lower availability rates and no clear trend in recent years.
- 9. 8 DECKPLATE records the actual number of hours in a month that a specific aircraft was coded as being available, based on details of maintenance tasks performed on the aircraft. AMSRR provides a daily projection of whether an aircraft will be able to perform missions that day. The aircraft’s availability is not reduced for overnight maintenance if no operations at night are planned. DECKPLATE data go back to 1990, but monthly AMSRR data on Super Hornets start in March 2017. Thus, we lack the ability to do longer-run analyses with AMSRR. The DECKPLATE and AMSRR Systems Measure Availability Differently
- 10. 9 0 20 40 60 80 100 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Percent AMSRR DECKPLATE Correlations of Availability Rates With Flying Hours AMSRR’s Availability Rates Correlate More Closely Than DECKPLATE’s With Monthly Flying Hours for Super Hornets The credibility of an aircraft availability metric is enhanced when it correlates closely with observed usage of aircraft; the correlation accords with intuition that more-available aircraft would fly more.
- 11. 10 0 20 40 60 80 100 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 0 100 200 300 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Percent Hours AMSRR DECKPLATE Fleetwide availability rates Annual flying hours per aircraft A Puzzling Result in AMSRR: Super Hornet Availability Rates Increased While Annual Flying Hours per Aircraft Decreased
- 12. 11 0 20 40 60 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Percent Over 60 hours 30 to 60 hours No hours 0 to 30 hours Frequency of Various Amounts of Monthly Flying Hours per Aircraft, by Year That Counterintuitive Finding Is Explained by a More Even Distribution of Flying Hours Across the Super Hornet Fleet in Recent Years
- 13. 12 Our analysis, requested by the House Armed Services Committee, shows that availability of Super Hornets, as measured using data from DECKPLATE, has degraded more quickly than availability of F/A-18C/Ds. In recent years, the Navy has increased procedures to combat corrosion as part of depot-level maintenance of Super Hornets. Some data indicate recent improvements in Super Hornet availability. Specifically, the Navy’s AMSRR system seems to measure availability more usefully than DECKPLATE, and data from AMSRR show an increase in availability of Super Hornets since 2018. So What Has Been Going On With Super Hornets?
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