AIR FORCE Magazine / December 200024

All of the services need more airlift, and there isn’t enoughof it to meet the demand.

ITHIN the last 14 months,the Air Force reorganizedas an “expeditionary”service and the Army

adopted an urgent new goal of be-coming lighter and more agile, shift-ing emphasis from heavy armoredunits transportable mainly by sea tolighter units that can travel by air.Both services—and the Marine Corpsas well—are relying on airlift as neverbefore to get to the fight.

It is no secret, though, that theUSAF strategic airlift fleet is inad-

A Clamor for Airliftequate to the stated national strategyof being able to win two widely sepa-rated Major Theater Wars fought inclose succession. Hardware problemshave forced the airlift fleet belowstated minimum operating levels. Atthe same time, airlift will likely becalled on more and more frequentlyas forces shrink and must rely onmobility to cover the same ground.

“It is clear to me,” warns Air ForceSecretary F. Whitten Peters, “thatexpeditionary operations, as plannedby the Air Force and now as planned

by our sister services, are going torequire more strategic airlift. To-day, we cannot meet the wartimerequirements we already have with-out accepting risk—and we nevercould—and our future requirementsare growing. We just don’t knowhow much yet.”

Peters added, “Unfortunately, wedo not have an executable plan tomeet those growing needs.”

Airlift is the key “enabler” of AirForce and Army operations as envi-sioned under their new deployment

W

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 200024

The airlift fleet is groaning under the weight of new demands from the militaryservices, all of which are trying to be more expeditionary and get to the actionfaster. Airlift is in such short supply that the Air Force has considereddelaying retirement of C-141 Starlifters like these, many of which have alreadybeen consigned to the boneyard.

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2000 25

By John A. Tirpak, Senior Editor

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AIR FORCE Magazine / December 200026

philosophies. Given its critical role,airlift’s status—how much there is,who pays for it, and who has priorityto use it—will likely be one of theflash points of the military debate inthe coming months.

Already, the airlift shortfall is iden-tified as one of the unfunded priori-ties of the Air Force. The USAFChief of Staff, Gen. Michael E. Ryan,told Congress in September that theAir Force over the next decade willneed to boost its budget by some $30billion to keep ahead of the mainte-nance costs associated with its agingaircraft, including airlifters.

“A Big Number”“It is a big number, this cost,”

Ryan told Air Force Magazine. “Wehave to figure out when it stops mak-ing sense to fix some of these oldairplanes and it would just be cheaperto buy a new one.”

Sometime after the new Adminis-tration has settled into office, thePentagon will conduct an updatedQuadrennial Defense Review that re-evaluates the world situation and theposture of US forces. The QDR willdrive the Defense Planning Guidance,which instructs the services on whattheir spending priorities should be.

Helping to illuminate the airliftissue will be a new and thorough-going report on mobility needs andcapabilities called Mobility Require-ments Study–2005. It has been pre-pared by the Joint Staff in the Officeof the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

of Staff. It looks at the whole capa-bility of US forces to move aroundthe world, whether by truck, rail,sea, or air. The requirement for air-lift is stated in terms of how muchcargo can be moved per day.

For years, the US had an airliftrequirement of 66 million ton milesper day, the term ton mile denotingthe amount of airlift capability re-quired to move one ton a distance ofone nautical mile. That was an in-terim airlift goal; the real require-ment was far higher but consideredunattainable.

After it entered office in early1993, the Clinton Administrationconducted its own Mobility Require-ments Study. That study, which wascompleted in 1994, lowered the re-quirement to 49.7 million ton milesper day, where it has remained eversince. Of that amount, the Air Forceis expected to provide 29.2 millionton miles per day with military air-lifters; the balance comes from com-mercial carriers through the CivilReserve Air Fleet.

The good news is that the CRAFprogram is fully subscribed, withparticipants at desired levels in allcategories. It is widely expected,though, that the MRS–05—a newblueprint for the military airlift ca-pability desired by 2005—will specifya higher benchmark for organic air-lift capacity.

Air Mobility Command has beenunable to fulfill the stated require-ment of 49.7 million ton miles per

day, mostly because of hardwareproblems stemming from spare partsshortages and the obsolescence ofkey systems, particularly on the C-5Galaxy heavy lifter.

The Army’s new emphasis onfaster deployment is another factorweighing heavily on the MRS–05.Stung by its sluggish deployment—and subsequent nonparticipation—in the 1999 Balkans conflict and theenormous amount of airlift neces-sary to deploy Task Force Hawk toAlbania, the Army has decided thatit needs to “transform” itself into aquick-moving power.

Shinseki’s VisionArmy Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K.

Shinseki has stated a goal of beingable to deploy, anywhere in the world,a brigade within four days, a divi-sion in five days, and five divisionswithin 30 days.

Shinseki unveiled the new strat-egy last fall at the annual meeting ofthe Association of the US Army.The strategy states, “Heavy forcesmust be more strategically deployableand more agile, with a smaller logis-tical footprint, and light forces mustbe more lethal, survivable, and tacti-cally mobile. Achieving this para-digm will require innovative think-ing about structure, modernizationefforts, and spending.”

Shinseki later said he expectedthe Army to become an all-wheeled—that is, nontracked—force by 2010,a prediction that raised howls of pro-tests from Army traditionalists whobelieve that armored invincibility onthe battlefield should never be tradedfor speed of deployment.

One of the programs Shinseki hastargeted as a standard-bearer of thenew philosophy is the Crusader how-itzer. The Crusader and its resupplyvehicle were both expected to weighin at about 50 tons apiece, meaningthat only one part of the two-ve-hicle, 100-ton system could be trans-ported in a C-5 Galaxy at a time. TheCrusader design has been slimmeddown to a combined weight of about80 tons, and Shinseki has furtherdeclared that the Army will not buyany field equipment that won’t fit ineither a C-130 tactical transport orin the back door of a C-17 strategicairlifter.

The Army’s goals, however, havenot won acclaim from the other ser-vices. An Air Force official involved

Moving passengers is not the problem; the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, whichmoves people in a crisis, is fully subscribed with participants. Oversize andoutsize cargo is the challenge, and only big-mouth airlifters can do the job.

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2000 27

with preparing for the QDR scoffedthat “changing a 100-ton Crusader toan 80-ton Crusader is hardly a ‘trans-formation strategy.’ ” Whether theArmy’s new direction will take rootwill depend on the outcome of theQDR, and especially the MRS–05.

That there will be high frictionover the apportionment of airlift isalready becoming evident. Variousinterest groups have begun circulat-ing position papers in preparationfor the QDR. In July, John Kreul, adefense analyst with the Institute ofLand Warfare, released a paper titled“Son of QDR: Prospects for theArmy.” He complained that the Armyis being unfairly labeled as “too slowand heavy to be relevant.” Kreulcountercharged that USAF short-changes mobility and, in any event,hogs all the available airlift when acrisis erupts.

“In fact,” Kreul asserted, “the AirForce currently consumes about 70percent of that scarce capacity in thefirst 10 days of a crisis-responsedeployment.”

Not ExcessiveActually, it’s not remotely accu-

rate to say that USAF consumes anexcessive or disproportionate shareof the nation’s airlift, if the experi-ence in the Balkans is any guide.

Deployment of the Army’s small-ish Task Force Hawk from one partof Europe to another required 542C-17 airlift missions. In sharp con-trast, the deployment of an F-22

squadron, which would have a tre-mendous amount of firepower, wouldrequire only about six C-17 missions.It is true that Task Force Hawk de-ployed to a bare Albanian base; if anF-22 squadron did the same, it wouldneed extra support and hence moreairlift to bring it in. However, thelonger range of fixed wing aircraftallows the US the flexibility to de-ploy to better-equipped areas (suchas Aviano AB, Italy), obviating theneed to bring in support.

For many other types of Armyunits, the story is much the same. Ittakes 98 C-17 missions to move aPatriot air defense battalion over-seas. It will take 98 C-17 missions tomove a Theater High Altitude AirDefense battalion.

Meanwhile, Ryan reports thatUSAF’s embrace of new deploymentconcepts has allowed AMC to re-duce by 22 percent the number ofairlifter sorties required to deployan Aerospace Expeditionary Force,the basic unit of USAF combat power.

The Air Force and Army are alsonot the only customers for airlift,and those other users also have towait in line when a crisis erupts.

Marine Corps Assistant Comman-dant Gen. Terrence R. Dake told re-porters in Washington in August thathe hopes his service gets weighedalong with the others in a balancedfashion when the QDR assesses air-lift needs.

The enthusiasm for expeditionaryforces is “the right thing to do for the

nation,” Dake said, and getting thoseexpeditionary forces out will have tobe a balancing act between “expedi-tionary [forces] and that which isheavy-hitting combat power [i.e., theArmy], and all the things you bringin between.”

Dake maintained that he doesn’tsee the new Army and Air Forceemphasis on expeditionary structureas “a threat” to Marine Corps inter-ests, but he thinks the QDR shouldtake a hard look at “what ... existsthat is already shaped to be expedi-tionary.”

There is “a finite amount of lift,”he noted, and all the various forcesthat must be brought to bear in theearly part of a conflict “have to bemanaged inside the lifts.” In eachscenario, the theater commander willhave to put priorities on airlift forthe kinds of forces he thinks aremost crucial at the outset, Dake said.

“We’ve always felt that early entrycapability was something the MarineCorps offered, and certainly a forc-ible entry from the seas is our forte.”The Marines, he said, are an enablerfor follow-on forces into a theaterand deserve their share of airlift, too.

The General Accounting Office,in a study of airlift capabilities itcompleted in June for the late Rep.Herbert H. Bateman, who was thenchairman of the House Armed Ser-vices subcommittee on military readi-ness, found that the Air Force isshort about a third of the organicairlift necessary to meet nationalstrategy requirements.

Can’t Do TwoThe Defense Department, the GAO

wrote, “does not have sufficient air-lift and aerial refueling capability tomeet the estimated two Major The-ater War requirements.”

“In total,” the GAO continued, “weestimate DoD is short (1) over 29percent of the needed military airliftcapability and (2) nearly 19 percentof the needed refueling aircraft.” TheGAO said this didn’t necessarilymean the US couldn’t win in thepostulated two Major Theater Warscenario. However, “the Office ofthe Joint Chiefs of Staff estimatesthat due to airlift shortfalls, militaryforces would arrive later than origi-nally planned, thereby increasing therisk that war plans would not beexecuted in a timely manner andpossibly increasing casualties.”

The military airlift fleet also routinely handles humanitarian missions. Here, atruck belonging to the globetrotting Fairfax County, Va., Fire and Rescue isloaded aboard a C-5 to aid in finding earthquake victims in Turkey.

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 200028

Air Force officials said that thetwo Major Theater War scenariodepends on rapid deployment of cer-tain hardware in the first month ofoperations, and that about three-fourths of this hardware “falls intothe oversize or outsize category,”meaning that it cannot fit on civilianfreighters and must be carried byeither the C-5 or C-17.

The GAO noted that Air Forceofficials said the shortfalls are due“primarily to the age of the aircraftand spare parts shortages.”

Airlift shortfalls among older air-planes like the KC-135 tanker andC-5 Galaxy have cropped up “be-cause of the increasing number ofaircraft that need depot mainte-nance,” the GAO asserted.

“More aircraft [are] in depot forlonger periods than planned (whichis factored into mission capablerate),” the GAO said.

One AMC official noted that olderairplanes like the KC-135 may have“thousands and thousands of hoursleft on the airframe,” and airframelife as measured in flying hours is akey component of assessing an air-craft’s physical age. However, theofficial said, “When you bring a 40-year-old airplane into depot, ... nomatter how well it’s been taken careof ... you will find things like corro-sion that can ... threaten the contin-ued viability of that airframe.”

The flow rate at which aircraft areexpected back from depot mainte-nance is disrupted because of unex-

On paper, the KC-135 should go on forever with good maintenance. Experience,though, shows that old airplanes really do need much more work than do newerones. Typically, a fourth of the KC-135 fleet is down with unexpected problems.

pected problems found during theinspection process and which mustbe repaired before the aircraft can bereturned to service, a retired generalexplained.

“It’s like when you take your oldcar in for maintenance,” he said.“They always find something elsewrong with it.”

The Aging Aircraft Program Of-fice at Wright–Patterson AFB, Ohio,is working on ways to detect struc-tural fatigue and corrosion problemson the KC-135 long before they mightappear in the aircraft, since AMChas stated its intention to keep thetype well into the 2020s and beyond.

An AMC spokesman, however,said the command had not noticedany “unusual” recent problems withcorrosion on the KC-135 and thatmission capable rates for the typeare even running slightly above therequirement. In August, the spokes-man reported, mission capable ratesfor the KC-135 were running at 86percent, vs. a “desired” level of 85percent.

The GAO said that AMC reportedits number of tankers—359, includ-ing 317 KC-135s and 42 KC-10s—is“acceptable, assuming the aircraftcan be shifted between the two nearlysimultaneous wars.”

“Technical Surprises”However, Peters worries about the

tanker fleet, noting, “We have nosignificant replacement programs onthe books for our aging tankers.” He

went on: “It is not that we aren’tgoing to have the tankers immedi-ately, but what we are seeing on theKC-135 fleet are what appears to bean increasing mission incapable ratedue to technical surprises. ... Theseare the kinds of problems which canput a whole fleet down or 200 air-craft down overnight for a period oftime and those are the kinds of wor-ries we have.”

There is no question, however, thatthe chief culprit behind the airliftshortfall is the C-5 Galaxy, which inAugust turned in a mission capablerate of 63.3 percent vs. a require-ment of 75 percent. Broken C-5sconsistently gum up the train ofworldwide AMC aircraft movementswhich take place 24 hours a day,AMC officials reported.

US Transportation Command andAMC chief Gen. Charles T. Robert-son Jr. calls the C-5 “the bad actor”when it comes to dragging down air-lift availability rates.

A series of fixes to the C-5 arealready under way, although a com-plete program to bring the type up toAMC’s standards in departure reli-ability will have to await the resultsof MRS–05.

“We have worked these contractsvery carefully ... so we don’t getahead” of the mobility study, oneAMC official noted.

The C-5 upgrades already underway involve a series of fixes to theaircraft’s engines, avionics, landinggear, electrical system, flight con-trols, hydraulics, and fuel system.While most of the improvements raisemission capability rates less than 1percent, collectively, they will in-crease the C-5’s mission capable rateby 11 percent, raising it to just aboutthe desired mission capable rate of75 percent, according to AMC pro-gram officials.

Moreover, the fixes are expectedto save AMC about $510 million peryear in operating and support costs,meaning they will pay for themselvesin a few years.

The biggest needed improvementto the C-5, though, is new engines.Lockheed Martin is conducting aprogram to develop an upgrade thatwould refit the C-5B fleet with theGeneral Electric CF6-80 engine. Thecompany, acting as the Air Force’sagent, selected the commercial, off-the-shelf engine, which is used onmost civilian and military widebodies

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2000 29

around the world, in June. The re-engining of the C-5 fleet in totalwould raise the type’s mission capa-bility rates into the 90 percent-plusrange and add significantly to thenumber of ton miles per day thatAMC could move.

In addition, the new engines wouldbe warranted to remain on the wingfor more than 10,000 hours. The cur-rent engines need to be taken off thewing for inspections and maintenanceat 1,500 hours.

New Flight RulesThe C-5 engine improvement is

also necessary for the C-5 to operateunder new international flight rules.With the existing engines, the C-5cannot climb fast enough with evena half load of fuel to the entry-point-to-track altitudes and corridors nowmandated in Europe.

engining would have to be weighedagainst other alternatives or sets ofalternatives, such as further buys ofthe C-17 airlifter, greater crew ratioson tanker aircraft, and assorted smallerinitiatives that can raise the through-put of the airlifter fleet.

Even if the full C-5 re-enginingwere to go ahead, fabrication of a testaircraft, testing the aircraft, and cre-ating a production capability couldnot be accomplished quickly. Only afew airplanes could be all the waythrough the re-engining and avail-able for service in 2005. Air MobilityCommand officials said the most ef-ficient re-engining schedule wouldmake the change while the C-5 was indepot maintenance; about 12 per yearwould get the new power plants overfive years. Since about 19 to 22 C-5scurrently go through depot each yearnow, there would not be any interimeffect on the fleet’s capability.

The C-17 multiyear contract,signed in 1996 and hailed as one ofthe keys to getting the program backon track, is about to enter its finalphase. Boeing, which builds the C-17,will need to begin building long-lead castings next year if any C-17sbeyond the original 120 for the AirForce are to be bought without abreak in the production line. Theforgings and castings involved re-quire three years of lead time.

Out of CashBoeing had offered the Air Force

a follow-on multiyear buy of an ad-ditional 60 airplanes, at 15 per year,

“Up until now, we’ve been able toask for waivers,” for extra time toclimb to the most efficient air corri-dors, an AMC official reported. AfterJan. 1, 2001, however, “we’ve beentold no more waivers will be granted.”That means the C-5 will have to fly atless efficient routes that require moreflying time and consume more fuel.Moreover, it will require more tank-ers since the type will often have totake off with less than a full load offuel to expeditiously reach even theless-desirable tracks.

The C-5 re-engining would be triedfirst with the C-5B fleet, which isyounger than the C-5A fleet and would

clearly pay back the investment overthe airframe life. Expansion to theC-5A fleet might be used as an incen-tive to Lockheed Martin for qualityperformance on the first batch.

“We expect this to be a large suc-cess, like the KC-135R [re-enginingprogram],” an AMC program offi-cial asserted.

The C-5 re-engining is among theprojects that will be presented in itsAnalysis of Alternatives to meet theairlift capability requirements set bythe MRS–05. The AOA will presentways it can meet the updated ton milesper day requirements and the cost as-sociated with each one. The C-5 re-

In 1994, the US set its airlift requirement at 49.7 million ton miles per day. Asof the start of 2000, the capacity of the Air Force strategic airlift fleet still fellshort by 5.2 million ton miles per day. That’s a shortfall of more than 10percent. The organic airlift fleet (excluding CRAF) is nearly 30 percent short ofoversize and outsize cargo capacity, the GAO found.

10 Percent Short of Total RequirementGoal of 49.7 Million Ton Miles per Day

CRAF 41.2%

KC-10 6.2%

C-141 11.3% C-17 9.9%

Shortfall 10.5%

C-5 20.9%

Parts shortages and old airplanes mean more late nights for ground crews.Here A1C Brent Hornick and SrA. Kacey Moore unpack a gas turbine compres-sor for a C-130.

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 200030

which would have driven the priceper aircraft down to $149 millioneach—including larger fuel tanks—but the Air Force, short of funds,was obliged to allow the offer toexpire at the end of 1999.

“Like everyone else, we are wait-ing for the MRS–05 to see what thenew requirement is,” a Boeing spokes-man said. Boeing may make a newmultiyear offer, but obtaining anadvantageous price will largely de-pend on whether the Air Force canavoid a break in the production line.

Even though the Air Force hasstated a requirement to replace spe-cial operations C-141s with 15 C-17sbeyond the originally specified 120,as yet no funds have been put in thebudget to accommodate them. TheFiscal 2002 budget so far has long-lead funding in it for only five air-planes.

In the Fiscal 2001 budget, the AirForce deleted three C-17s, postpon-ing them for several years. The pro-duction line was unaffected, though,because the UK had ordered fourC-17s to lease from Boeing, and theBritish aircraft “simply took the placeof some American aircraft on theassembly line,” the Boeing spokes-man said. Though the Air Force willprovide training and support to theUK for the C-17s, an AMC spokes-man said no effect on the US AirForce is expected as a result of theUK C-17 lease.

While one of the options in AMC’sAnalysis of Alternatives would likely

The C-17 is unquestionably more capable than the C-141 it is replacing; it cancarry nearly double the load. With only about half as many C-17s as C-141splanned, AMC’s flexibility is reduced. One C-17 can’t be in two places at once.

include replacement of some or allof the C-5s with C-17s, such an op-tion would not be the service’s pre-ferred choice. As Robertson told theHouse Armed Services Committeein the fall of 1999, “It is not goodbusiness to put all your eggs in onebasket. ... I would never recommendgoing down to just one airlifter—aslong as we can afford it.”

The GAO determined that the KC-10 continues to reliably turn in aperformance slightly better than re-quired, averaging a mission capablerate of 88 percent vs. a requirementof 85 percent. Used in both the airliftand tanker roles, the KC-10 slightlyoffsets the shortages among otheraircraft in AMC’s fleet.

The Analysis of Alternatives isalso reported to include an optionthat would extend the life of a smallnumber of C-141Bs, which wereslated to leave the inventory com-pletely by 2006. While costs wouldincrease from maintaining an entiresupport system for just a few air-planes, more T-tails would be re-tained, adding flexibility to the fleetand more aircraft to cover missions.

The C-17 is replacing the C-141on nearly a one-for-two basis, mean-ing that, although the tonnage thatcan be moved with the larger air-plane is roughly the same, there arefewer individual aircraft to spreadaround the globe.

Robertson, addressing the HouseArmed Services readiness subcom-mittee in October of last year, said,

“Even though tonnage capabilitiesremain close to the same, we losetremendous flexibility with so manyfewer tails.” The 135 C-17s “canonly be in half as many places as 270C-141s.”

Another approach to fixing—atleast in the short term—the missioncapable rate of the airlift fleet issimply to continue fully funding thespare parts line items in the Air Forcebudget. The service has added moneyback into spares after cutting itsspending several times in the 1990s,but a senior service official admittedthat “we put the money in, and wetake it back out for something else.We have not made a solid enoughcommitment to spares yet, in myopinion.”

Air Mobility Command has madeoperational changes to further squeezemissions and productivity from itsairlifter fleet. At the Tanker AirliftControl Center at Scott AFB, Ill.,AMC has developed a computerizedsystem that gives on-demand vis-ibility into where its airplanes are,what they’re carrying, who’s on thecrew, where they’re headed next, andwhen they should arrive. A flightmanager who overseas as many as10 aircraft keeps tabs on the air-planes and stays in touch with thecrews, helping them with field di-versions or other problems that mayarise during their missions. The sys-tem has streamlined repair of brokenairplanes and rerouting of crucialitems by other aircraft, commandofficials reported.

Ryan told members of the DefenseWriters Group in Washington, D.C.,last June that the MRS–05 is beingexamined by the Joint Chiefs espe-cially for “how much higher we needto go [in millions of ton miles perday] to reduce risk.”

However, he put the potential costof the MRS–05 recommendations inperspective. As a rule of thumb, Ryansaid, for every million ton miles perday of increased airlift, you have toincrease by about seven C-17s thesize of the airlift fleet.

Ryan continued that he does notfeel the MRS–05 will be the lastword on the airlift situation.

“The demand for lift is an issuethat will always be there,” he said.“We will never have enough lift,ever, to do two simultaneous MajorTheater Wars. We can’t afford to gothere.”