Airlift Shortfalls Blamed on Aging Aircraft.

Outdated infrastructure, C-5 deterioration contribute to transportation woes

Along-awaited Pentagon study on future military airlift needs should help the Bush administration decide how the nation will cope with growing demands for airlift and with an aging aircraft fleet, said the nation's top military official in charge of transportation.

"The need for airlift is increasing," said Air Force Gen. Charles T. Robertson Jr., chief of the U.S. Transportation Command. Strategic airlift--the capability to transport massive amounts of combat troops, equipment or humanitarian supplies around the world--"is the most talked-about subject by the CinCs [U.S. regional commanders]. ... It is among their top five priorities," Robertson said during a Washington D.C. conference on military airlift, sponsored by Defense Week.

Strategic airlift requirements, which are measured in ton-miles flown per day, were curtailed by about one-third after the end of the Cold War. In 1993, the Clinton administration established a requirement for the United States to have 49.7 million ton-miles of strategic airlift. The standard was based on the U.S. military strategy of being able to fight two regional wars nearly simultaneously.

Million ton-miles per day (MTM-D) is a commonly accepted measure of performance across the transportation industry. It reflects how much cargo can be delivered over a given distance, in a given period of time.

Currently, said Robertson, "we are about 5 million ton-miles per day short." And that shortfall is expected to double to 10 MTM-D because a new study on future air mobility needs, called MRS-2005, will set the U.S. strategic airlift requirement at more than 54 MTM-D. "The MRS-2005 will say that 49.7 million ton-miles is not enough," he said, "so the shortfall would be greater than 5 million ton-miles."

Of the total, the U.S. Air Force must provide 29.2 million ton-miles per day. The remaining 20.5 are supplied by commercial air freighters under the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) program.

The failure to meet the standard set in 1993 can be attributed to inadequate infrastructure--fuel systems and ramps, for example--and the low reliability of the C-5 aircraft, Robertson explained.

The C-5As are showing corrosion and fatigue cracks on the horizontal tie box, which is a "2,000-pound slab of steel that holds the tail together," Robertson said.

Another factor to be considered, he said, is that the U.S. Air Force is replacing 270 C-141 cargo planes with 135 new C-17 Globemasters, which have a much bigger cargo box. Nevertheless, this will leave the Air Mobility Command with fewer aircraft to go around.

The problems outlined by Robertson should not be interpreted, however, as symptoms of a "crisis" in U.S. air-mobility capabilities, he said. Whether such a crisis materializes in the future, "depends on the response to MRS-05 by the [Bush] administration. The solution depends on the top-line that comes out of the [Defense Department's] Quadrennial Defense Review."

Bridging these shortfalls in air-mobility will demand a large investment in both airlift and air-refueling platforms, said Robertson. The Air Force's workhorse tanker, the KC-135, is showing its age, he noted. Within many of the KC-135s in the fleet today, he explained, there is corrosion and stress fractures in the stabilizer trim assembly--which controls the pitch of the aircraft. Recently, 193 KC-135s were in repair depots. There are 544 KC-135s in the active duty, reserve and National Guard fleets. The service also owns 59 KC-10s cargo/ranker aircraft.

The Air Force plans to replace the existing KC-135s between 2013 and 2040, Robertson said.

But those plans could be in jeopardy if the Pentagon does not provide more funding for air-mobility programs, he added. "If you only fund what is in the budget right now ... it will rake $14 billion a year, over and above what the Air Force budgets right now," Robertson said. "And, if you want to start to get well, [an additional] $20 billion to $30 billion a year [would be needed]."

The mobility force on average is more than 30 years old, he said. That compares to an average of 15 years of age for the fighter force. AMC operates six of the seven oldest aircraft in the U.S. Air Force.

In 1989, the Air Mobility Command had 40 overseas bases and 15,000 employees to remove cargo and refuel airplanes. "Now, I have 12 bases (six in Europe and six in the Pacific) and 4,000 people," said Robertson. But he also noted that the cutbacks were justified. The current force size, he said, is "enough." The problem is that the fleet of aircraft is aging and the infrastructure is inadequate.

"We are putting in new warehouses and new fuel systems. That will fix half of the gap problem," said Robertson. "The other half is [poor] C-5 reliability."

Neil Curtin, associate director of the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog agency, said the C-5 has a mission-capable rate of 55 percent. The Air Force standard is 75 percent. That shortfall, he said, is equivalent to 21 aircraft. For the C-17, the Air Force standard is 87.5 percent, and the current mission-capable rate is 66 percent, the equivalent of 10 aircraft.

The C-5 prime contractor, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., has laid our a proposed remanufacturing program for the aircraft, that would extend its life to 2040 and increase its mission-capable rate to 80 percent, said William B. Arndt, the company's vice president of strategic airlift. He explained that the C-5 airframe has 80 percent of its structural life left, so it would make financial sense for the Air Force to invest in refurbishing the fleet with new engines and advanced avionics.

But it is not clear when the Air Force will be able to move forward with this program, given the competition for funds within the service's various communities.

Robertson explained that the three or four C-5s could be remanufactured for the cost of a single new C-17. A new C-17 costs between $180 million to $200 million.

"In the C-5 upgrade, there are no certainties," said Robertson. But he cautioned that the Air Force should make the C-5 a top priority because it needs to have an alternative to the C-17. "This country should never become dependent on one strategic airlifter for outsize cargo," he said. "It needs both the C-5 and C-17."

More money also should be spent on defensive systems for air transports, said Robertson. The threat of "hostile fire" against a large airplane full of troops "keeps me awake at night," he said. "I fly about 240 very vulnerable large gray airplanes that carry a lot of troops." The more compelling threat, he said, are shoulder-fired missiles, which are available worldwide. The Pentagon has funded a program for large aircraft infrared countermeasures. "But we are only buying

12 for the C-17s and eight for the C-130s. We need 65 or so to do one small-scale contingency in a high-threat environment."