Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

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168 • Air Mobility Alternatives for a New Administrationbuys the same or similar equipment that it wants its allies to acquire. Fundamentally,this should allow us to leverage our current forces for greater effect, and/or potentiallyreduce our force structure because the capability exists elsewhere.What Are the Issues?The United States has the best air mobility capability in the world. No other militaryor combination of other nations’ capabilities can equal its power. This comes at asignificant cost. Even with record-level defense spending, plans for air mobility areunrealistic without significant increases in the defense budgets or a drastic shift ofAir Force funding. In a nutshell, there is a significant Plans-Reality disconnect. 5 Thefollowing are but some of the critical questions for the next administration concerningair mobility plans and programs:• How much and what kind of strategic airlift, air refueling, tactical airlift andspecial operations (“ops”) air capabilities do we need in the coming decades?• Do we continue aerial refueling, airlift and special ops air dominance basedon the current military service and DOD plans?• Do we increase, decrease or maintain current capability?• Do we implement innovative initiatives to substantially lower costs?• Do we trade some capability in these areas for other areas?• Do we develop hybrids of the above recommendations?Strategic Air RefuelingThe importance of the air refueling (AR) mission has grown in the post-Cold Warperiod; it has evolved from a former emphasis on strategic bombers to a new emphasison deploying and operating tactical and special operations forces (SOF), bothshore-based and ship-based, in distant regions. The tanker “air-bridge” conceptprovides mobility to get forces to the theater, and then tankers in theater act as forcemultipliers, making assets more capable by enhancing their range and persistence.Air refueling is a critically important consideration for the next administration in itsdeliberations about future defense acquisition programs, even more so as the resultof the Boeing tanker scandal. How and what the next administration does to resolvethe root causes of the original scandal, and the subsequent sustained protest upheldby the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), is central to any real procurementand acquisition reform. 6
James P. Stevenson • 169The vast majority of the aerial refueling tankers will reside in the U.S. Air Forceand, by fiscal year 2009 (FY 09), will consist of approximately 420 Eisenhower-eraKC-135s and 59 KC-10s, for a total of just under 500 strategic tankers. It is importantto note that a strategic tanker refers to the aircraft itself as being strategic (usuallylarger and longer range like strategic airlift), not what it refuels. The next tanker, theKC-X 7 , will have the capability and flexibility to be both tanker (refuel with a boomfor Air Force aircraft and “hose and drogue” for Navy aircraft on each mission) andairlifter, similar to the KC-10. 8 The Navy uses F-18s to air refuel other carrier aircraftand turns to contracts, such as with Omega Air, for niche air-refueling capabilities.However, the vast majority of the U.S. Navy’s wartime air-refueling requirements areprovided by the U.S. Air Force. On the other hand, the U.S. Marine Corps uses about75 KC-130s (several variants) for air refueling (fixed wing, helicopters and CV-22s)and ground refueling. Since fiscal year 2000, the Marine Corps has been buying KC-130Js, permitting them to retire all the older KC-130 models with an eventual goal ofapproximately 80 KC-130Js. In addition to these capabilities, air refueling for specialoperations by the multi-mission MC-130/HC-130 aircraft (sometimes referred to astactical air refueler) is particularly important in today’s environment. 9Strategic AirliftStrategic airlift carries passengers, materiel and weapons long distances betweencontinents or theaters (intertheater). By fiscal year 2009, the United States will haveapproximately 300 strategic airlifters consisting of 190 C-17s, 59 C-5As and 52 C-5B/C/Ms. The C-17 has been one of the U.S. Air Force’s “crown jewels” since themid-1990s. Its effectiveness has been touted by the Air Force, but it has come withhigh acquisition and operating costs. The C-17 is arguably versatile, serving as both astrategic and tactical airlifter but not as efficient as a pure strategic airlifter (e.g., C-5Bor C-141B). At the tactical level, the C-17 is costly to operate and it exposes a $300million aircraft when it flies into a combat zone.Procurement of C-5s in the 1970s resulted in one of DOD’s biggest acquisitionscandals. Recently, the U.S. Air Force went through cost reporting proceedings, basedon the Nunn-McCurdy legislation, with the C-5 Re-engineering and ReplacementProgram (RERP), because of excessive cost growth resulting in an approximately 50percent increase in unit costs. 10 As a result, in January 2008, the Office of Secretaryof <strong>Defense</strong> (OSD) decided to limit RERP to only about 50 C-5B/C aircraft (these arethe C-5s that were bought in the 1980s) but to continue the modernization of all C-5avionics. 11Another critically important segment of strategic airlift is the Civil Reserve AirFleet (CRAF). The CRAF supports DOD airlift requirements in emergencies with commercialairlines pledging aircraft for various segments of the strategic lift mission. 12Currently, the CRAF is capable of meeting approximately 40 percent of the wartime
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AMERICA’SDEFENSE MELTDOWN★ ★
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America’sDefenseMeltdownpentagon
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Bruce I. Gudmundsson served in the
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James P. Stevenson is the former ed
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table of contentsPrefaceExecutive S
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PrefaceThe mere notion of a “melt
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Preface• xieffective national sec
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executive summaryChapter Summaries
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Executive Summary • xvThe militar
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Executive Summary• xviiRecommenda
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Executive Summary• xixobjectives
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Executive Summary • xxiThe chapte
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Executive Summary• xxiii• Analy
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2 • Introduction & Historic Overv
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10 • Introduction & Historic Over
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CHAPTER 2SHATTERING ILLUSIONSA Nati
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28 • Shattering Illusions: A Nati
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54 • Leading the Human Dimensions
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CHAPTER 4MANEUVER FORCESThe Army an
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82 • Maneuver Forces: The Army an
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98 • A Traveler’s Perspective o
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100 • A Traveler’s Perspective
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218 • Long in Coming, the Acquisi
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220 • Understand, Then Contain Am
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Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

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