Thread: USAF Europe
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Old 04-28-2015, 08:03 PM
Olefin Olefin is offline
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Most likely most of what is still flying would be transport aircraft of various types, with prop jobs like the Hercules being more abundant than jet powered ones.

As for attack and fighter aircraft, outside of the Middle East and France you are probably looking at A-10's and older smaller jets that were easier to maintain -especially as the F-15's, later model F-16's and F-14's really don't have other jet fighters to go up against. If there are any F-15's still being used it would be the E in an attack role and then only when it was needed for specialized bombs or missiles the A-10 couldn't carry.

I don't quite see it getting down to only ultralights - there is still enough fuel for some air operations, just not for anything large scale. And while a couple of Cessna's armed with machine guns or rocket pods doesn't sound like much, its a lot better than no air support at all.

The interesting thing is that now spare parts may actually be quite abundant - i.e. you have an awful lot of grounded jets and helicopters lying about for a relatively few active duty jets. It may be more a case of getting the parts to where you have the jets - i.e. if you have 15 grounded F-15's in Germany you can strip for parts but your three flyable planes are in the UK you have a little delivery issue.
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