Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

176 • Air Mobility Alternatives for a New Administrationrequirements make this a strategic Achilles’ heel. To fix strategic mobility primarilythrough airlift would require a Herculean effort in both cost and force structure. Itwould be better to incrementally improve strategic airlift in cost-effective and innovativeways. Hopefully, this would lead the U.S. Army to reduce its strategic air mobilityrequirements closer to Marine Corps standards, by enhancing mobility requirementsthrough strategic sealift, and some additional prepositioning of material. Historically,strategic sealift ends up carrying approximately 95 percent of the total tonnage. Thecost-benefit analysis is not even close. 31Based on the discussion above, we make the following recommendations:1. Reduce the number of strategic airlifters from approximately 300 to 260.2. Immediately retire 39 of the 59 C-5As.3. Double the capacity of fast strategic sealift, then retire the remaining 20 C-5As. 324. Stop the buy of C-17s at approximately 205.5. Employ a portion of the KC-X and/or KC-10 fleets for both passenger and cargocarrying capability.6. Increase the cargo capacity of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) by about 10percent.7. Develop innovative options (e.g. encourage more allies to focus on strategicairlift, etc.).7. Develop new cost-effective alternatives for specialized cargo that do not requiremilitary-unique aircraft.By implementing the recommendations above, DOD could reduce the cost ofstrategic airlift by approximately 35 percent from current plans.How could we possibly reduce tactical airlift costs by approximately 20 to 30percent and not lose capability? Current plans call for the acquisition of roughly 120-plus C-130Js, 24 C-27Js, and retaining large numbers of C-130Hs with a significantamount of dollars for C-130 modifications. Our alternative plan calls for a 15-percentreduction in total aircraft. Halting the C-130J buy at 100 would save about $3 billionin acquisition costs. Aggressively divesting C-130Hs earlier than scheduled avoids aseries of unnecessary modifications and relatively high O&S costs.