November 23, 2007: After two weeks of no flying, and intense structural inspections, the U.S. F-15 fleet was cleared to fly again . The U.S. Air Force has halted non-critical flights of its F-15C (the interceptor version) fighters after a National Guard F-15C crashed on November 2nd. It appeared that the crash was the result of structural failure. Five years ago, an F-15C traveling at high (over 2,000 kilometers an hour) speed crashed when its left tail fin broke off.

F-15Es (the two seat bomber version) operating in Afghanistan were not grounded initially, but soon were when it was realized that the problem may be a design flaw, not age, that caused the 27 year old F-15C to go down. The F-15Es were restored to flight status after about a week, once each aircraft had undergone an extensive structural examination (taking about 13 man hours). Most F-15Es are less than ten years old. But some F-15Cs are over twenty years old. The F-15E is still in production for export customers like Singapore and South Korea.

Structural failure is more common in older fighters that have lots of hours (over five thousand) on them. When originally designed, the F-15 was believed to have a service life of only 4,000 hours. But new materials and design techniques increased that to 8,000. In peacetime, F-15s are in the air 250-300 hours a year. But because of the 1991 Gulf War, the 1990s "no-fly-zone" patrols over Iraq, and the current war, the F-15 fleet has piled up the hours more quickly, and many are approaching the 8,000 hour mark.

If weak components are detected, they can be replaced with stronger ones, made of materials not available when the F-15 was originally built. But you want to find the weak components before they fail. While scanning technology has improved, it's still not good enough to detect all the F-15 components possibly weakened by years of use. As a result, flying an F-15 is going to be a bit more stressful from now on. To some in the air force, this situation has a bright side. One can now make a more compelling case to build more F-22s, to replace F-15 that are wearing out faster than expected.

This component failure problem is not unique to the F-15, and has been occurring with increasing frequency among aging fighter aircraft all over the world. The end of the Cold War in 1991 led to the cancellation of many warplane replacement programs. Air forces were compelled to make do with thousands of increasingly older aircraft. Whenever an aircraft goes down because of a structural failure, you have to ground all planes of that type until you know exactly what caused the loss, and made any needed repairs to other aircraft of that type. Pilots are a pretty sharp lot, so governments don't dare try to play games with this. If the pilots suspect they are being set up to fly dodgy aircraft, they will not fly them, or not fly them in a useful (stressful) way.

Some countries, like Israel, are making big bucks by upgrading older fighters, and this sometimes includes structural mods that extend the useful life of the aircraft. Despite the greater dependence on electronics, jet fighters still do a lot of violent maneuvering, and this weakens key components of the aircraft structure. This eventually causes aircraft to fail and fall from the sky. It's nothing new, and has been happening since World War I. This problem, despite all the attention it has gotten, will not go away any time soon.