Rc135 Aircraft - The aircraft was overhauled with significant changes to the airframe and engines in 2005. It was also upgraded with a cockpit inertial navigational system as per the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards.
Boeing received a $248m order from the USAF between 1997 and 2002 to build and install re-engine kits for 11 KC-135 and 11 RC-135 aircraft. The re-engine kits incorporate new engine struts and nacelle, structural fittings, wiring harnesses and hardware to upgrade the engines.
Rc135 Aircraft
Overall, while the severity of the flaws with non-conformal pins has not been fully assessed, it's at least encouraging that the Air Force acted so aggressively to prevent potential problems before they manifest in a more dramatic fashion.
Orders And Deliveries
A Chinese fighter jet intercepted a US reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea last week and performed an "unsafe maneuver," forcing the US aircraft to take evasive action, according to Indo-Pacific Command, the command responsible for overseeing US military operations in the
region. Lastly, the Air Force also operates three WC-135R Constant Phoenix jets, a weather reconnaissance aircraft employed to suck in air samples into a holding sphere, from which onboard sensors can 'sniff' out radiological activity associated with nuclear testing in real time.
These three aircraft were recently converted from KC-135R tankers at a cost of $208 million, replacing the prior WC-135W aircraft based on older, increasingly unreliable C-135B airframes with less fuel-efficient TF-33 engines. “The U.S. The Indo-Pacific Joint Force is dedicated to a free and open Indo-Pacific region and will continue to fly, sail and operate at sea and in international airspace with due regard for the safety of all vessels and aircraft under international law," the statement said.
. The grounding also affects 17 specialized RC-135 surveillance planes. That includes the RC-135V/W Rivet Joints, which not only listens in on communications, but collects data on the electromagnetic emissions of military systems so they can be readily classified, identified and located.
Boeing Rc- Variants
The RC-135U Combat Sent is dedicated to studying the capabilities of radars. And the RC-135S Cobra Ball's job is to gather detailed data on other countries' missile tests—hello, North Korea! The majority of aircraft interactions, including those between the US and China, are conducted in a safe and professional manner, the official said.
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But in cases such as this incident when they are determined to be unsafe, the US responds through diplomatic and military channels through lines of communication with Beijing. The Boeing RC-135 is powered by four F108-CF-201 high bypass turbofan engines each of which can produce 21,000lbf of thrust.
F108 is the US military designation of the CFM56 engine manufactured by CFM International. The engine reduces fuel consumption, noise and emissions as per the stringent FAR 33-6 ingestion rules. The Chinese government has sent large numbers of military aircraft into this region of Taiwan's ADIZ, which is international airspace, in recent years.
These large-scale flights typically come in response to actions on the part of the authorities in Taipei or their international partners, especially the United States, that the government in Beijing objects to. The May 30 sorties came days after the U.S.
Retired Airliner Military Workhorse
President Joe Biden said that the United States would defend Taiwan against any attempt by authorities on the mainland to seize it by force, comments that drew a swift rebuke from the Chinese government and that were subsequently walked back by American officials.
On December 21, a Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet flew within 20 feet of the nose of an RC-135 Rivet Joint, a US Air Force reconnaissance plane with about 30 people on board. In response, the RC-135 had to take "evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision," INDOPACOM said in a statement Thursday.
U.S. Military officials, as well as members of America's Intelligence Community, have said in recent years that they believe the PLA is working to put itself at least into a position where it would be confident in its ability to conduct a successful military intervention against Taiwan by 2027.
.U.S. authorities have also said that they do not believe that this necessarily means the government in Beijing will rush to launch such an operation at that time. At the same time, there has been much discussion about what Chinese officials might be taking away from the international response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Rc- Reconnaissance Aircraft Development
The government in Beijing has been critical of sanctions and other actions taken in response to Russia's aggression, but has so appeared to provide only limited to Moscow. The RC-135U in question, which has the serial number 64-14849, flew its mission near areas of China's southern coast, including around Hainan Island and into the Gulf of Tonkin, on June 6, according to online flight tracking data.
It is now June 7 in that part of the world. Hainan is home to the highly strategic Yulin Naval Base, the People's Liberation Army Navy's (PLAN) primary hub in the region and its main nuclear submarine base, where all of its ballistic missile submarines are homeported, among other things.
The RC-135 can climb at a rate of 1,490m/min. The maximum speed of the aircraft is about 933km/h. The range and service ceiling are 5,550km and 15,200m (50,000ft) respectively. The aircraft weighs around 78,743kg and its maximum take-off weight is 133,633kg.
Something was off with a key component used to literally hold many U.S. Air Force aircraft together—and it resulted in the service grounding 207 vital aircraft according to a Time Compliance Technical Order issues in February.
No matter what, RC-135U 64-14849's recent flight along China's coastlines in the South China Sea, as well as the preceding one near areas further north, underscore the U.S. The military's clear interest in having the most up-to-date and detailed information possible about Chinese radars and its integrated air defense system as a whole, across this highly strategic part of the world.
The most important are the Air Force's roughly 390 KC-135 Stratotankers, which can effectively multiply the range and endurance of all Air Force combat aircraft with in-flight refueling. The vital tankers also frequently do double-duty as cargo aircraft.
The KC-135 fleet is actually outlasting the smaller fleet of more modern KC-10 Extenders, and remaining in service longer than planned due to long-running problems affecting the Air Force's new KC-46A Pegasus tanker based on the Boeing 767 airliner.
A Tweet yesterday from the SCS Probing Initiative, a public flight and ship tracking effort run through China's Peking University in Beijing, further speculated that the RC-135U's proximity to the shore in its recent flights could give it the ability to collect data on targets deeper.
inside the country. The USAF began training the RAF's No 51 squadron crew on the RC-135V/W Rivet Joint aircraft at Offutt Air Force Base as part of an agreement signed between the US Department of Defense and the UK Ministry of Defense in January 2011.
Sébastien Roblin has written on the technical, historical, and political aspects of international security and conflict for publications including 19FortyFive, The National Interest, MSNBC, Forbes.com, Inside Unmanned Systems and War is Boring. He holds a Master's degree from Georgetown University and served with the Peace Corps in China.
You can follow his articles on Twitter. The offending items, first publicly revealed on February 9 in a .css-3wjtm9{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.125rem;text-decoration-color:#1c6a65; text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-3wjtm9:hover{color:#595959 ;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}memo posted onto an unofficial Facebook page associated with Air Force non-commissioned officers, are apparently "non-conforming" vertical pins.
Two of these 5-inch pins are used to bear 90 percent of the load fixing the vertical stabilizer (ie. tail fin) on the C-135 family of aircraft. The failure of just one pin would therefore be sufficient to compromise its load-bearing capacity, causing the entire vertical stabilizer to ... "depart the aircraft," as the memo dryly puts it.
There is certainly no shortage of radars and other signal emitters of potential interest for an aircraft like the RC-135U along China's coastlines, and around Hainan's Yulin Naval Base in particular. Other U.S. military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, including at least one U.S.
Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol plane fitted with a secretive radar pod, have been tracked flying similar routes in the past. Video of the incident from INDOPACOM shows the J-11 flying off the nose of the RC-135.
As the two aircraft draw closer, a defense official said it is "unlikely" the Chinese jet could have maintained a safe visual separation from the larger, heavier American aircraft, which was maintaining its course and speed.
The RC-135 then takes evasive action to avoid a collision, descending away from the Chinese jet. Jets with non-conformal pins must have the component replaced at a depot—in most cases at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex.
Even then, the fix doesn't require removing the entire tail and takes only a day—unless there's damage to the lugs. The route, which kept the aircraft in international airspace very close to Chinese territory the entire time, is similar to one that a U.S.
Navy EP-3E Aries II, another electronic intelligence gathering platform, was flying along at the time of a now infamous collision with a People's Liberation Army J-8 fighter jet in 2001. Geolocating and categorizing radars and other signal emitters is an essential part of producing accurate "electronic orders of battle" regarding the air defense capabilities of adversaries or potential adversaries.
The RC-135Us, which can process intelligence data onboard and transmit information in near-real-time, can also be deployed to support tactical-level operations in a contingency scenario, as well as perform various test and evaluation roles. The danger of incident is no joke—in 1985, a Japanese 747 airliner lost its tail midflight and plummeted into a mountain, killing 520 in the deadliest aircraft accident involving just one plane.
The culprit in that case was explosive decompression of a stress fracture incurred from a prior tail collision. Foremost, it was the workhorse keeping all of those planes refueled in the sky: the service's airliner-based KC-135 Stratotanker.
It also affected RC-135 and WC-135 surveillance aircraft extensively deployed to monitor the activities and technologies of foreign militaries (particularly China, North Korea, and Russia). This same aircraft, one of only two RC-135Us in service, flew another sortie that took it similarly close to areas along much of China's central and northern coastlines on June 3. Both of these sorties were conducted from Kadena Air Base on the Japanese island.
of Okinawa. A U.S. Air Force RC-135U Combat Sent electronic intelligence aircraft conducted a flight in the past 24 hours along much of China's southern coastline that meets the northern end of the South China Sea.
This sortie follows reports indicating a recent uptick in Chinese fighters harassing foreign surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft flying over international waters in the South China Sea region and elsewhere in the Pacific recently. This includes an incident disclosed just this weekend involving a particularly dangerous intercept of a Royal Australian Air Force P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol plane by a Chinese J-16 fighter jet, which you can read more about here.
The RC-135S Rivet Ball features an extended nose radome comprising S-band receiver antenna. It is also fitted with ten large optically flat quartz windows to track cameras. This variant is also equipped with a plexiglass dome fitted in the center of the top fuselage for manual position tracking.
That said, the Air Force deems the risk of a pin-related accident low enough that aircraft with faulty pins were authorized to fly to the maintenance depot to have them replaced. No mishaps due to these pins have been reported so far.
In addition, the RC-135U's appearance off China's shores follows a major PLA show of force aimed at Taiwan last week. A total of 30 Chinese military aircraft, including a mixture of 22 fighter jets of various types, as well as various airborne early warning and control aircraft, electronic warfare, anti-submarine, and ISR planes, flew into the southwestern corner of the island's Air
Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on May 30. This was the largest number of sorties into this part of Taiwan's ADIZ since January 23, when 39 Chinese aircraft flew missions there. This weekend, the Australian government issued statements regarding what it said was a particularly dangerous intercept of one of the Royal Australian Air Force P-8As flying over the South China Sea by a PLA J-16 fighter jet back in May.
The Chinese fighter cut across the path of the Australian plane and fired decoy flares and chaff, reportedly causing damage in the process, as you can read more about here. L3 Link in partnership with L3 Aerospace Systems delivered a new RealitySeven™-based Level D-equivalent Operational Flight Trainer (OFT), a flight deck simulator, to RAF Waddington in June 2018. The OFT is a high-definition, seven-channel out
-the-window visual system and six-degree-of-freedom motion platform to train pilots to fly the RC-135W aircraft. According to the Omaha World-Herald, by February 19 all of the WC-135 and RC-135 surveillance jets based at Offutt Airbase in Nebraska were reportedly verified not to use the suspect pins, and able to resume flight ops.
That included two Cobra Ball spy planes sent on February 20 to observe a failed test of Russia's latest silo-based nuclear missile.
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