A wrench in every plan: maintainers keep ‘em flying

  • Published
  • By Air Force 1st Lt. Kelsey Smith and Air Force 2nd Lt. Michael Trent Harrington
  • 3rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron/JBER Public Affaris
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  The hangar echoes with the hollow metallic sounds of machinery, men and women working around the clock, all day, every day. Riveting, wrenching, welding and wiring all lend their peculiar notes to a low mechanical chorus of bustle and repair, the disordered symphony of things painstakingly restored to order.

Neatly arranging toolboxes and hurrying to-and-fro along the flight line are efforts to control chaos and prepare the F-22 Raptor, one of the Air Force's most incredibly sophisticated flying platforms, to work, fly and fight in the most unpredictable of environments, the air.

The men and women of the 3rd Air Maintenance Squadron do not always receive a lot of publicity because so much of their work is designed to be undetectable. The surest sign of a job well-done in the maintenance world is precisely when nothing remarkable happens. The planes go up in the air, the planes come back down - no special excitement, no dramatic mid-air emergencies, only the routine.

Yet every day, maintainers demonstrate their skills to the world through the thunder of jets that would not be airborne without them. The elemental calling of a maintainer is to fix and fly aircraft. The daily--and nightly--process of making planes safe to fly, however, is far more complex. The 3rd AMXS includes nearly 400 Airmen and more than half a dozen Air Force specialty codes. There are two different sides of maintenance, the back shop and the flight line, together comprising an environment that is simultaneously ever-changing and highly controlled. The back shops deal with very specialized fixes, either on a specific system or in a certain field. The flight line has to constantly balance minor issues and problems while harmonizing all the scheduled maintenance that comes due to ensure the aircraft fleet is as combat-ready as possible. After all, it does no good to have combat-ready pilots without combat-ready aircraft.

Everything in the world of the maintainer is tracked, traced and monitored. The pro-supers discuss each of the 38 aircraft, including which were fixed on swing-shift and night-shift earlier that morning and which are still in need of work. All equipment needed to do any job has to be checked out by name to ensure knowledge of where all tools are at all times.

"We have morning and evening production meetings to discuss the status of the aircraft," said Air Force Master Sgt. Patrick Mahoney, pro-super, 3rd AMXS. "We talk about what we fixed, what happened in the day's flying--it's all about producing sorties."

A maintainer's biggest daily concern is scheduled maintenance.

"There's maintenance scheduled daily, annually, every few months, every certain number of flying hours from a dozen to a thousand," Mahoney said. "Imagine if you had a fleet of cars; you can't drive every car every day or you'd end up having to change all their oil the same day."

Nonetheless, repairs are often unpredictable. A task that took 10 minutes yesterday could take three hours today if a new issue is discovered or if a recurring deficiency reveals a deeper problem. Each jet is prepared for every single flight it takes and some of that prep work happens months in advance. Most inspections are pre-scheduled to make sure the jet stays as healthy as possible. From reviewing the forms and records, to ensuring all mandatory maintenance has been done, to configuring and loading the correct weapons, each aircraft is given a great deal of attention to make sure it is ready to go.

The 90th Fighter Squadron is the only F-22 squadron using the most modern software system, known as Increment 3.1. That means some inspections and fixes are only performed here.

"We work on the newest stuff, so we have to learn a lot every day," said Airman 1st Class Zakee Krudup, crew chief, 3rd AMXS. "We are always doing something."

All these organizations have a vested interest in each sortie that flies, but perhaps few Airmen take more pride than the flight line maintainer who helps put that jet in the air. The next time JBER homes or offices are rattled by an F-22 taking off, residents might do well to remember the catalyst for much of that afterburning jet fuel--an incredible amount of elbow grease.