Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

178 • Air Mobility Alternatives for a New AdministrationBy following these recommendations, we can reduce the cost of tactical airlift byapproximately 20 to 30 percent.Although we believe that Special Operations Air should have a strategic emphasis,this does not mean we cannot save significant resources and still increasecapability. Our recommendations not only decrease costs, they increase capabilitywhile increasing the number of aircraft by approximately 20 percent. This numberof aircraft would increase even more if we include small, manned counterinsurgency(COIN) aircraft.We recommend that AFSOC give their CV-22s to the U.S. Marine Corps and acquireone or two helicopters variants. The CV-22 is an expensive aircraft to operateand support, and it also has a dubious history of numerous acquisition and integrityfailures. With relatively high acquisition, operating and support costs, it appearsthat CV/MV-22s will cost much more than conventional helicopters to procure andoperate. 36Although we recommended stopping the C-130J buy in the Tactical Airlift Section,we recommend a continued buy of C-130Js for Special Operations and convertingthem to MC-130s. The Service/OSD plans for MC-130s not only recapitalizes all thecurrent MC-130s (approximately 40 aircraft), but it increases their numbers. Webelieve that 40 MC-130s should be recapitalized with the C-130Js. For additionalcapacity beyond that provided by these C-130Js, we should acquire a variant of theC-27J or something else.The AC-130 gunship has had a successful history, but we believe it is time to moveon to a smaller, cheaper variant. Once that new variant is ready for operations – InitialOperational Capability (IOC) – we recommend retiring the older AC-130s. We alsoTable 3. Tactical Airlift Recommendations Compared With Service/OSD PlansService/OSDPlans for aircraftin 2030RecommendedAircraft in 2030Delta CostpercentageEstimateC-130Js C-130Hs JCAs AJACS NTA Totals127 200 24 80+ 0 431100 100 100 0 100 400-30% -50% 4x more * * -20-30%*The delta costs between an AJACS and the NTA is significant. There is little ResearchDevelopment Test & Evaluation cost for NTA. Furthermore, the NTA flyaway and O&S costs aresubstantially less. Note: AJACS and NTA are notional aircraft to replace C-130s by approximatelythe 2020s. The AJACS would be a full RDT&E program before production while the NTA wouldbe a modified commercial “off-the-shelf” aircraft.