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Senate Panel Votes for More C-17s
InsideDefense.com NewsStand | John T. Bennett | May 19, 2006
The Senate Armed Services Committee has rejected the Air Force's proposal to scuttle the Boeing-owned C-17 airlifter production line, while questioning the findings of the high-profile Pentagon mobility study that triggered the plan.

“The committee is concerned that premature closure of the C-17A production line would leave the Department of Defense with inadequate lift capabilities,” the panel writes in a report accompanying its version of fiscal year 2007 defense authorization bill. The Senate authorizers also are worried the C-17 production line would, under the Air Force's plan, be shuttered before results of an effort to modernize the C-5 airlifter fleet are known.

In its FY-07 unfunded requirements list, the Air Force included seven new Globemasters, which were excluded from the service's spending request. Blue-suited officials have said the C-17s were put on the unfunded list because existing Globemasters are being used more than initially anticipated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Because Senate authorizers are concerned a fleet of only 180 Globemasters could have a chilling affect on the ability of the military's airlifter fleet to meet future requirements, their bill clears the Air Force to spend up to $657.7 million next fiscal year to buy two new C-17s and begin advanced procurement efforts ahead of future purchases. Specifically, the Senate Bill clears the service next fiscal year to spend $400 million to buy the pair of new Globemasters, and $256 million to pay for the advanced procurement efforts.

The Senate committee's plan would redirect $433.2 million in FY-07 the service intended to use for line-closure expenses toward the procurement of new planes. When coupled with another $224.5 million in C-17 dollars included in an FY-06 defense spending act that was earmarked for aircraft procurement of line-closure work, the committee came to the $657.7 million amount.

For its part, the House last week approved its own FY-07 defense authorization bill that takes a different tack on the C-17 program (Inside the Air Force, May 12, p5). The House bill would clear the Air Force to spend $2.9 billion within its C-17 program coffers -- $299.8 million more than the service requested -- to purchase three additional C-17s next fiscal year.

If the full Senate approves the plan to allow the service to spend all $657.7 million to buy new Globemasters, a House and Senate conference committee would be charged with addressing the manner as they prepare a final FY-07 defense authorization measure.

The mobility study was led by Kathleen Conley, director of the projection forces division in the Pentagon's office of program analysis and evaluation, and Navy Rear Adm. Mark Harnitchek, vice director of the Joint Staff's logistics directorate (J-4). Other participants included U.S. Transportation Command, all of the combatant commands, the services and the offices of the under secretaries of defense for policy and for acquisition, technology and logistics.

Instead of providing specific recommendations -- previous mobility studies have launched multibillion-dollar ship and aircraft programs -- the study featured “insights” that helped form the basis for procurement decisions spelled out in the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review and the department's FY-07 spending request. Both were delivered to Congress in February. Defense officials have publicly stated the high-level -- and closely held -- assessment found the military has an adequately sized strategic airlift fleet.

That conclusion helped shape a decision by Pentagon officials to include in the QDR a call to stop buying C-17 airlifters after the 180th Globemaster is delivered in 2008. Boeing has said without a major U.S. buy, it will be forced to close its C-17 production line. For its part, the QDR endorses the notion of “warm storing” the line, to give defense officials the option of reassembling it down the road should more Globemasters be needed.

The Senate authorizers, however, used sharp language to question the mobility study's C-17 conclusions, stating in the report that in drawing the conclusion that 180 Globemasters would meet the military's lift needs, study officials used “assumptions” that “no longer hold true.”

Based on those comments, the authorizers state in the report that “there is a clear need for additional C-17As in order to meet [intertheater] and intratheater lift requirements.”

In a report accompanying the House measure, that chamber's Armed Services Committee also sounded alarm bells about how the MCS was conducted and stated concern about how its call for 180 Globemasters might adversely affect the military's future airlift needs.

“The committee is concerned that the MCS scenarios used for the modeled year were not intended to fully stress the defense transportation system and is deeply concerned by the shortsightedness of the MCS to project capabilities required past the year 2012,” states the House panel's report.