USAF, Army Both To Select, Operate New Airlifter

by Aero-News Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien

It was a year ago that Aero-News last looked at the question of the US Army's need for intra-theater airlift, and its proposal to buy a commercial off-the-shelf aircraft for what it calls the "Future Cargo Aircraft" requirement. The latest developments of this proposal include a change to a joint USAF-USA requirement and a re-opening of the contract, which had been narrowed to the Alenia C-27J (below) or the EADS C-295, to all comers.

The order size is also substantially larger -- instead of the original 33 aircraft, the order now looks like 145 planes -- the slightly "bigger half" of 75 for the Army, and 70 for the Air Force. These changes push back the initial operational capability of the aircraft to no sooner than 2010. This raises the stakes precipitously. These changes are seen against the backdrop of the failure of an attempt to close the light airlift gap with civilian contract aviation.

Why light airlift? Well, sometimes you need to move stuff around the far-flung and voluminous Mid-East and Asian theaters in which we find ourselves engaged. And often, you don't have enough stuff to fill up a C-130 (that's thirty tons of stuff, even for an old C-130, and more for a J model). The joint airlift management system, despite the "joint" fig leaf, is operated by the Air Force, and it likes order and routine -- which is to say, it chokes on ad hoc, one-time deliveries, however urgent; and it responds to its own internal bureaucracy, not to combat commanders' needs.

The Army has a "sort of" cargo plane, the pathetic C-23 Sherpa (below). The Shorts Brothers product was acquired, originally, to provide training airlift for National Guard Special Forces units (another abdicated Air Force mission). The Sherpa is slow. ("It's not fair to call it a bug smasher," one pilot told Aero-News. "It just kinda sneaks up on them and roughs them up a little." It's actually good for about 170 knots). It is unpressurized, which means it flies in range of enemy weapons -- in Iraq, it usually flies right on the deck for safety.

It makes up for being slow by its short range and long runway requirements (that's a joke, but not a very funny one; a fully laden Sherpa needs nearly a mile to clear a 50-foot obstacle on a standard day at sea level; almost twice the length of a C-130 carrying nine times the payload). If this weren't enough, a highly-publicized lawsuit alleged shortcuts in the process of remanufacturing short-haul airliners into Sherpas, shaking crew and passenger confidence.

The Sherpa crews have been making them work in Iraq (they can't handle the altitudes in Afghanistan) through sheer guts and persistence -- not because the USA gave them a good machine. It can't handle standard cargo pallets, so cargo has to be broken down to go between Sherpas and other airlifters, and it doesn't accommodate standard Air Force ground handling equipment, so that cargo has to be broken down by hand -- soldiers and airmen working, essentially, as coolies.

None of these limitations were problems when the mission was to show up four or six times a year at an airfield and spend a day or night dropping Special Forces teams for a proficiency drop or a team infiltration on a nearby drop zone. But pushed into the cargo mission, the Sherpa community is running out of baling wire and duct tape. Each Sherpa deployed to Iraq is flying five years' hours in a year, and the machines are already showing the wear. CH-47 helicopters are also being flogged to death's door in all theaters, in part to pick up the slack for absent fixed-wing light airlift, and in part because the brawny Boeing helicopter has more margin for dealing with high and hot conditions than the Army's other machines.

The Army had planned to have a contract competition underway already between the C-295, which is represented in the USA by Raytheon, and the C-27J, which is represented by L-3 Communications in the USA. (These contenders are discussed in more detail in our February 2005 report). But the Air Force, organizationally, resists the idea of Army-operated cargo planes and succeeded in cancelling the original competition. Instead, this year's Quadrennial Defense Review foresaw, and a new Memorandum of Understanding between Air Force and Army procurement officials, which was signed Jan. 30, provides, that the two will work together to select the new plane from a completely open field by December.

Most of the Army-written requirements still stand, as they are defined largely by the mission the Sherpas can't quite fill. The aircraft must be able to operate off a 2,000 foot prepared runway, off an unprepared or damaged runway, it must carry cargo pallets compatible with the USAF/NATO standard, and it has to be pressurized.

The Army had such an aircraft (less pressurization and pallets) until 1966, when the Air Force took over the planes -- the DeHavilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou, called the CV-2 and C-7A in US service -- and the mission. They swore that they would support the Army seamlessly -- and they did, for almost four years. But the Air Force wanted to get rid of piston powered planes a lot more than they wanted to keep a promise to the Army, and the Caribous went to the National Guard on their way to the boneyards. Proposed jet replacements, the YC-14 and YC-15, were cancelled in the defense cutbacks of the 1970s.

The Army shares responsibility for the shortfall with the Air Force, because its highest airlift priority has long been lift for items like M-1 Abrams tanks and other fighting vehicles that require outsized airlift such as C-17 or C-5 aircraft. It long envisioned future wars as climactic tank battles, like the first month of the war in Iraq, and not long-term support for small elements like Special Forces teams, Army task forces of Battalion or smaller size, or Provincial Reconstruction Teams in remote places.

An attempt to plug the gap by hiring civilian contract aircraft has not been a success. Cargo lines from nations of the former Soviet Union are inexpensive, competent, and have suitable aircraft. But political pressure has led to the hiring of American firms, such as the politically well-connected Blackwater, which have been unable to "walk the walk" in theater. Evidence of organizational slackness and gross disregard for safety shocked Army aviation and Air Force officers who have been involved in the investigation of a Blackwater CASA-212 crash in Afghanistan. Air Force officials in Washington awarded a no-bid contract for up to $38.5 million to the controversial Moyock, NC firm, to partly remediate the light airlift shortfall in Afghanistan.

The new light-airlift contract can't help much before 2010, and that's assuming that the two services agree on a current off-the-shelf aircraft by December, and don't lard the plane with gadgets that require testing. An off the shelf buy seems to lead back to the C-27J and C-295 (above), but BG Stephen Mundt, who as Director of the Army Aviation Task Force is deeply involved in the process, told Reuters, "Everybody keeps telling me there's only two contenders, and I say, 'How do you know that?' There may be a whole bunch of people. It will be interesting to see what industry comes back in with once that hits the street."

Mundt even suggested that a tiltrotor might be considered, which raises the question of how serious he is about a December decision -- or a 2010 fielding. The troubled V-22 Osprey (below), which cannot meet the mission requirements for weight lifting, altitude performance, or pallet carrying, has been under development since 1983 (23 years), flying since 1989 (17 years), is still not operational, and unit costs have exploded into the $120-150 million dollar range, each. It might deploy for its original USMC requirement... some time in 2007. (The civil BA609 tiltrotor, now in flight test, is also off budget).

In the meantime, contracting may be the only way to get the mission done, and certainly all will learn lessons from the tragic Blackwater mishap, which claimed six lives: three Blackwater contractors and three active-duty soldiers... one of whom bled to death while the Army and Air Force searched desperately for the airplane, which was being flown by a pair of Afghanistan novices who launched without navigation equipment, and had not told anyone their intended route.

FMI: www.af.mil, www.army.mil