Thinking Out Loud: Airplane age is in the eye of the beholder…or something like that!

The concept of antiquity is relative when talking about military hardware.

There’s a definite tendency for us to look up and see the Blues in their F-18s and the T-birds in their F-16s and think, “Man! This is technology on the ragged edge of the future.” Only they’re aren’t. Not even close! It’s hard to believe that anything our military is flying can be old, bordering on antique, when just the opposite is true. Does that make us defenseless? Hardly!

1953 was an interesting year of technological steps forward. Or not!

Okay, so it’s common knowledge that the B-52 is a no-kidding antique. It first flew in 1952 (68 frigging years ago!). Today, the newest one is 61 years old, so no one flying it is as old as the airplane they’re flying. Best official guesses are it won’t be retired until 2040 so that old sucker will be pushing the century mark. Wow! As a tool, it does what it does well so, no reason to retire it.  

Thankfully, we have lots of newer, ready to fight aircraft. REALLY? Not really! However, the bad guys, the original bad guys, anyway, the Russians, are flying airplanes just as old as ours but with older avionics and such. Ours pack so much whiz bang electronic stuff, birds like the F-22 and -35 are nothing but flying computers. However, looking at the ages, I guess we’ll have the equivalent of old guys like Sly Stallone and George Foreman slugging it out at 30,000 feet.

An F-16 is 1969 vintage along with the 172N and ‘69 SS impala

The question bound to be asked is, how old is old? Take a look at this table. ‘Think an F-15 or F-16 is new (some -15 versions are)? Try 51 years since first flight for the F-15! F-16 is a youngster at 47 years. Okay, so we have lots of new versions and updates of each and they’re working wonderfully but they sure as hell ain’t new!

BTW - I apologize for the screwed up columns. I did this in Word but something didn’t translate when bringing it into Substack and I couldn’t sort it out. Sorry!

 Design Began  First flight  On Line  Age

B-52    1940’s  1952      1955      68

B-1     1970s   1976   1985      47

B-2 1979 1989      1997      34

A-10  1960 1972        1977      51

F-15   1967        1972      1976      51

F-16   1969        1976      1979      47

F-18 1973      1978        1983      49

F-22   1981/85  1997        2005    26

F-35   1991 2000          2015    17       

Note the differences between the first flights and when they went into service.Also, when I was digging up the start dates, some are very vague because of the complexities in the programs that spawned the airplanes. Especially the F-35. 15 years and a jillion dollars, first flight to squadron service, and it still has problems!

Only 187 production F-22s took to the air. Supposedly they stopped production to focus on the F-35, which would be cheaper to produce. Except it isn’t. 935 have been built. But…it’s ugly!

Truth is, a lot of folks smarter than me say we should stop messing with the overly complicated, wildly sophisticated, incredibly expensive, very-late-to-the-party F-35 and just build lots of F-15s. It’s far more reliable and we can just overwhelm “them”, whomever “them” is, with numbers and better missiles and combat technology. This has always worked for us in the past. Of course, that assumes we can get enough pilots to fly them, which is an issue.

Incidentally, the first F-35 flew 17 years ago and various versions of it are still not fully functional. Plus, service reliability sucks!!! I’m not a fan!

BTW, an odd fact: While researching some of this stuff I ran across this in Wiki: In 1956 a USAF B-47 disappeared into the Mediterranean with two nuclear bomb cores on board and, to this day, not a trace of them has been found. So, two nukes are somewhere in the Med! Hmmm!

This whole airplane age thing has haunted me forever. Here’s a column I did a while back that addresses the same subject from a civilian point of view.

Grassroots: Unplanned Obsolescence

Antiquity is strictly a point of view

Every so often something will happen that reaches out and raps you in the noggin and makes you realize how fast time is ripping past. And how quickly something that is familiar and simply second hand to you, becomes exotic and antique to a new generation. I’ve had a couple of those epiphanies lately.

The first was when I was doing an interview with a bright young couple that had brought their beautifully restored Cherokee to Oshkosh. At the time of the assignment, I was thinking, “What are we coming to that we’re actually writing articles on an airplane as new as a Cherokee?” Then, in the course of the interview one of those sudden time-passage realizations jumped up and bit me. The airplane, which was one of the first PA-28’s produced and identical to those I first started instructing in, was ten years older than either of its owners and they were in their early forties. I had to shake my head that even a Cherokee could be over a half-century old! That just didn’t compute! How could that possibly be true?

I did the math in my head: the PA-28 got its type certificate in 1960, so it probably flew in 1959. Holy crap! That’s nearly 53 years ago! OMG! (Editor’s note from 2023, that’s 63 years today!)

The second reality check came, when I looked around and realized that the F-117, easily the most other-worldly aircraft ever to fly, had been out of inventory for over three years. Even more amazing was that it was 37 years old at the time it retired! Theoretically, it’s now eligible for gate guard duty and, although they are now being stored in protective hangars, the time will come when we might be seeing what looks like Darth Vader’s personal hotrod on posts out in front of VFW halls.

These are examples that point out that every single one of us eventually reaches a point (if we’re lucky) that those things with which we’re presently surrounded and those things which populate our memory are much older than we think they are. And generations that follow ours see them in an entirely different light than we do.

I can still remember the first time I opened the door of the Tri-pacer I learned to fly in. It was so fresh off the production line that it still had that new airplane aroma that makes airplanes smell differently than other machines. In my mind’s eye, I see Tripacers as nothing more than used airplanes. After all, they’ve been floating around the edges of my consciousness my entire adult life. The fact that one could be over 60 years old doesn’t even enter my mind. However, intellectually I know that so many generations have come down the pike since that time, that to the majority of aviators today, it’s past being seen as a classic and is passing into antiquity. It’s not a biplane, but to younger generations, it’s close.

As far as that goes, the airplane I fly almost every day (S-2A Pitts) was built in 1974. Do the math: it’ll have its 40^thbirthday before long. Ha! (Note from 2023: it’s now turning 50! Damn!) That’s nuts! How did that happen? However, here’s a better question: if it’s still doing its job, what difference does it make how old it is? I can answer that: it makes no difference. None at all.

This question of how much age the artifacts in our lives have accumulated is of zero consequence if they still perform the functions we ask of them.

Lemme get this straight: The legendary V-tailed Bonanza and the incredible F-86 came out the same year that Ford was still building flat-head V-8 Fords, 1945/46!

That’s one of the beauties of aviation. At least when it comes to the hardware. Every airplane has a mission for which it was designed and, for the most part, those missions haven’t changed enough to actually demand a new kind of airplane. The reason we go to a new airplane is usually because of comfort, speed, efficiency and mechanical upkeep. If we based acquisition decisions on how well it was doing the basic job, we’d never change airplanes.

If we’re talking about learning to fly, for instance, how much have the requirements changed? Lift, thrust, drag and gravity haven’t changed much since Wilbur and Orville’s time. So, the only reason trainers have changed has been to increase the ease and cost of operation—nosewheels fly easier than taildraggers, small engines burn less fuel, etc. Past that, what do super sophisticated trainers teach better? An argument could be made that they are actually a downgrade in terms of teaching the basic skills (don’t get me started!).

And how about going places? On a five-hundred mile trip (the average general aviation trip), the difference between doing 150 and 200 mph is 45 minutes. Going 125 mph adds another 45 minutes. So, going 500 miles in a simple-as-a-ball-peen hammer old Tripacer that costs almost nothing to own or buy (relatively speaking) would get us there an hour and a half later than a brand new, 200 mph hotshot that costs more than our house and more than our mortgage to own. Most of us are flying because we like to fly, so is it worth that much to shorten something we like to do an hour and a half? The obvious answer is no.

So, should any of us feel bad that parts of our lives have the patina of age on them? No, because that patina only comes from experience. From having been there. Should we feel old because portions of our memories are judged as antiquated by others? No, because each of those memories taught us something and the more memories we have, the more we have to pass on.

If we’re lucky, both the mechanical and mental support systems we’re surrounded with are still doing their job beautifully. So, there’s no reason to update either our hardware or our way of life. There’s no reason to change because everything around us has molded itself to us like a well-worn pair of boots, and that doesn’t happen overnight.

The first indication that I’ve decided things need changing will be when you see me mounted on a pole out in front of a VFW hall with pigeons perched on my head. That’s when you’ll know I’m officially retired. bd