Americans should demand that the military be held to high standards — and that includes Hill Air Force Base.
Much has been made recently of widespread accounting and equipment problems in the military. Two recent stories in this newspaper detailed how repair problems associated with Hill grounded 90 F-16 fighter jets in December and 198 of the nation's 546 KC-135 aircraft.
Hill administrators are aware of the problems and are confident that their skilled personnel will have the KC-135s flying again as quickly as possible. Those same administrators need to realize that, with all of the base-closing shenanigans associated with the Clinton administration the past several years, Hill is going to be under considerable scrutiny.
That's not a bad thing. Hill, and all military bases, should be closely scrutinized. They should also be more efficient.
The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., believes most of the problems at Hill are due to political subterfuge by the Clinton administration. He contends that the president's delay in closing two air logistics base in California and Texas prevented a smooth transfer of work and created repair and parts shortages that the Air Force now is using to justify giving more work to outside contractors. All of this further weakens depot bases such as Hill.
Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters concedes that transferring work from California to Hill has been much more difficult than expected. For example, he said, equipment used to repair or make parts for many types of aircraft had to be disassembled, crated and physically moved from Sacramento to Ogden, where it had to be reassembled, tested and calibrated. That, in turn, caused a scheduling problem with repairs.
But this isn't an airtight excuse. Hill needs to make sure that it is properly monitoring its various processes. That includes an effective form of communication and coordination both in-house and with the federal government. The lack of communication and coordination resulted in the recent rash of military goof-ups.
Hill Air Force Base and the military need to constantly be vigilant. Unfortunately, based on recent reports, there is little reason to feel encouraged.