Hill's 4th FS to ramp up flights

  • Published
  • By Mary Lou Gorny
  • Hilltop Times Editor
HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah --  The 388th Fighter Wing's 4th Fighter Squadron resumed flying on July 16. The squadron returned safely from a 180-day deployment in April and was ordered to stop flying because of budget cuts due to sequestration.

More than 25 F-16s and pilots are flying again, but the reinstatement of flying hours does not fully restore combat capability.

Col. Lance Landrum, 388th FW commander, responded to questions about the development with media representatives. "We (the U.S. Air Force) were able to reprogram some money and 27 of our 54 F-16s will start to fly again and slowly ramp up over the next few weeks to get our pilots and maintainers up to speed safely. It's going to take a few weeks before we get up to a regular full flying schedule like you saw back before all this started in April. We need to do it slowly and safely because we have got nearly 30 pilots and hundreds of maintainers who have lost a little bit of currency, lost a little bit of proficiency, despite our best efforts. We are going to take it one piece at a time over the next few weeks and ramp it up," he responded.

Additionally, the 421st Fighter Squadron will increase flying from a lower level of readiness back to their normal Combat Mission Ready status. Getting the maintenance routine, spare parts system and pilot proficiency up to a Combat Ready Status will take about 2-3 months of flying at the higher rates.

The change to the flying hour program respresents congressional action on the $1.8 billion overseas contingency operations reprogramming action which made peacetime dollars available. This action is solely about Fiscal Year 2013 and there is still uncertainty in future budgets.