USAF Readiness Down...

...by 17 %.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Air Force readiness is down 17 percent since 2001, according to Gen. Bruce Carlson, Commander, Air Force Materiel Command.

But we don't need new transports or tankers or anything. And it's not like USAF personnel are being stressed by the war. Nope, just an Army and Marines operation.

"The Air Force uses a sliding scale of C1 to C4 to measure the readiness, with units graded C1 and C2 prepared to “go and accomplish the mission,” he said.

But when units are rated C3 or C4, “you have to find major workarounds,” Keys said.

Since 2001, the Air Force has seen “the percentage of units in C1 and C2 [status] in a steady decline,” Keys said.

“Wear and tear on the fleet is visible,” said Gen. Duncan McNabb, Commander of the Air Mobility Command.

But personnel are also a concern, Keys said, especially the so-called “one-to-one dwell time.”

One-to-one dwell is what the Air Force calls the six months on, six months off deployment schedule airmen with high-demand skills, such as air transport crews, military police, or intelligence experts, are experiencing."

Even with the Total Force concept well in place (since the USAF has been at war for over a decade and a half now), the Reserves are still facing significant strain.

"The Air Force is preparing to call for C-130 Reserve air crews to volunteer for deployments, said Lt. Gen. John Bradley, Chief of Air Force Reserve.

The service has to ask for volunteers instead of mobilizing reservists outright because all of the Air Force’s C-130 Reserve crews reached their two-year mobilization limit in the fall of 2006, Bradley said.

The Air Force has about 150 C-130 crews in the Reserves, Bradley said, and not having access to those crews potentially puts a serious strain on the service’s ability to provide transport in combat zones."

Keep this in mind the next time the USAF is asking for additional acquisition funds. We're not making it up. The force is stressed, and unless we get the funding we're asking for, America's Air Force is going to be broken.

h/t: Alert 5