Do cheap and easy to maintain L-39s across the Air Force. Easy to get checked out in, good stick and rudder flying, a good stable platform and can do formation, tactical, pattern work, and navigation. There are a couple L-39s at my home airport and the owner flies a few times a month. Fuel is higher right now, so he’s not flying as often right now, but compared to any of our operational aircraft it’s a fraction of a penny on the dollar per flight hour. Put a few (3-6) L39s on every single base with aircraft and triple turn each jet daily (1.5 to 2 hr) with two pilots per flight. A couple of designated IPs for checkouts, check rides, etc. A few contract maintenance A&Ps.

You could even do the old school ACE cross country trips for weekends. This is bringing back some good memories from Plattsburgh ACE days.

1 hour ago, bfargin said:

Do cheap and easy to maintain L-39s across the Air Force. Easy to get checked out in, good stick and rudder flying, a good stable platform and can do formation, tactical, pattern work, and navigation. There are a couple L-39s at my home airport and the owner flies a few times a month. Fuel is higher right now, so he’s not flying as often right now, but compared to any of our operational aircraft it’s a fraction of a penny on the dollar per flight hour. Put a few (3-6) L39s on every single base with aircraft and triple turn each jet daily (1.5 to 2 hr) with two pilots per flight. A couple of designated IPs for checkouts, check rides, etc. A few contract maintenance A&Ps.

You could even do the old school ACE cross country trips for weekends. This is bringing back some good memories from Plattsburgh ACE days.

Yup, the L-39 NG is probably the best solution if this is the answer to crew proficiency and experience building (ACE 2.0).

If ACE ever got traction, for each base / wing / mds community it was attached to it would likely need a bit of structure / defined objectives to address observed crew flying issues to get institutional support.

Use ACE for experience building in formation, generate high count patterns for SA building, x-country with training objectives (enroute rendezvous, dynamic retaking, training diverts, etc…).

The dollars n cents, jet availability plus wear n tear on the heavy iron would be the data driven reason why.

Cross currency would be critical to also justifying it.

Some percentage would / should be set aside for crew planned good deals but kept to a reasonable amount.

I've got a fair amount of experience flying the L-39, including in Airshows.

Buying used L-39s: they run about $600,000 and up for a nice one. Closer to $1M with the Garrett/Honeywell engine instead of the Ivchenko (which would be a terrible choice). But the USAF isn't going to buy used jets.

L-39 NG?

Not. A. Chance. At $15-$20M, they are more than the T-7!

Go buy the Gamebird.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by HuggyU2