Pentagon Eyes Use Of Foreign Carriers

If the Pentagon has its way, foreign air carriers could soon join a club that has so far been exclusively American. They would be able to contract with the military to haul troops and supplies to the four corners of the globe.

Until now, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet has been limited to 24 US carriers. Last fall, the Department of Defense reported spending $1.2 billion to fly almost a half-million troops and 161,000 tons of equipment to and from Iraq. That report was filed even as the commercial airline business continued to suffer through one of its worst-ever slumps in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and last year's SARS outbreaks. The activation provided starving airlines -- two of which had gone bankrupt -- a ray of hope in an otherwise desolate economic environment.

But in its 2005 appropriations requests to Congress, DoD asked lawmakers to repeal the law barring foreign carriers from engaging in Civil Reserve Air Fleet operations.

The Civil Reserve Air Fleet was created by President Harry Truman to get troops and equipment to a war zone in a hurry. Since its formation in 1951, the fleet has only been activated twice -- once in 1991, during the first Persian Gulf War and again during the Iraq invasion last year.

The New York Times reports the Pentagon pays 8.5 cents per mile for each seat on an activated Civil Reserve aircraft. But because there is excess capacity among airlines in Europe right now and because some US carriers have been reluctant to participate in troop rotations, the Pentagon has decided to look beyond our borders. In doing so, some industry analysts think the Pentagon could negotiate the per-seat/per-mile price down to about a nickel.

FMI: Civil Reserve Air Fleet Fact Sheet, www.nata-online.org