With all of the recent C-17 heavy air transport purchases by NATO, Canada, et. al., a reader drew our attention to a recent piece by military analyst Loren Thompson at the Lexington Institute think-tank in Washington, DC. Pulling no punches, it's titled "The Dumbest Weapons Decision of the Decade."
People from other countries often underestimate the role of think tanks in Washington, because there are no comparable players where they live. That's a big mistake. American academia's growing irrelevance means that the policy agendas and talking points of US political parties are often underpinned by think-tank research and proposals. Lexington isn't in the top tier with institutions like Brookings, Heritage, AEI et. al., but it's pitching into a combustible environment. The final decision on C-17 procurement will come from Congress, the C-17 already has a lobbying base, and the country is headed for the final stretch of the 2006 mid-term elections; it's also gearing up for a hotly-contested and security-focused Presidential election in 2008.
An excerpt from Thompson's September 13, 2006 Issue Brief (which sounds like a political address), reads:
"The C-17 Globemaster III is by all accounts the best long-range military transport ever built. It can fly very big loads into very small places, it has a 90% mission-capable rate, it is cheap to operate, and it costs no more than a commercial airliner. The plane is so popular with military users that it is being used at a rate 40% higher than expected. Basically, every C-17 that's available is in use everyday, delivering supplies to troops in Afghanistan, providing humanitarian relief to refugees, evacuating wounded soldiers from Iraq (which is one reason why the time it takes to get wounded from the war zone to stateside hospitals has declined from ten days in the first Gulf War to three days today).
So of course, policymakers have decided to stop building the plane. They say they have enough C-17's to meet strategic airlift needs for the foreseeable future. Even though their stated requirement for how much airlift is needed hasn't changed since a "Mobility Requirements Study" was conducted in 2000. Perhaps you remember what it was like back then. No global war on terror. No shift to expeditionary warfare. No plans to return troops in Europe to the U.S. No big hurricane evacuations. The good old days....
Someday in the not-so-distant future, American soldiers are going to die because the joint force couldn't get essential supplies into some remote airstrip fast enough. When that day comes, critics will recall the optimistic assumptions that justified killing the nation's only modern jet airlifter and say, "How could anybody think that 180 C-17's would be enough to cover the world when the only other long-range airlifter in the fleet was designed in the 1960's, couldn't use small airstrips, and had chronic reliability problems?"
Its its defense, the US Air Force believes that re-engining (and often re-wiring) its giant C-5 Galaxy aircraft will significantly improve their readiness rates, while advancing the planned aerial tanker buy will help by ensuring that US transport aircraft can make long flights when needed. If there's a limited amount of money to go around and several programs calling, choices must be made. Likewise, his "every C-17 that's available is in use everyday" line reveals a misunderstanding of how the process actually works, and what the current mission rate actually means.
With that said, that current usage rate shows no signs of slowing and it will age the C-17s early, like the C-141 Starlifters before them. With the C-5s facing a finite but indeterminate life cycle of their own due to aging issues, the USAF is making a risky procurement call by shutting down C-17 production. Especially given the legislature's set-aside of funds for 42 additional aircraft.
Thompson's analysis fails to discuss the problem in the kind of balanced depth one expects from a think tank, but he makes a number of sharply-worded points, concerning a potential hot-button issue, that's tied to a lot of jobs around the country. If a number of candidates begin picking up on his talking points in the runup to 2008, the USAF may find that it has made a risky political call as well. If so, they may receive their extra C-17s "for free" via Congress - but only as long as one doesn't count political credibility as a cost.
The U.S. military burned through 135 million barrels of refined petroleum products last year...
The C-17s were the biggest gas guzzlers.
It's nice to be able to fly stuff around the world, but is it worth the cost?
Beg pardon. Computed how? And by whom, based on what sources?
Monkyboy, wouldn´t you expect that the sales reps spend less on fuel than the truck fleet?
Time to buy that new Boeing blended-wing design...
They are closing the Boeing plant in Long Beach because of this decision. 5500 employees have until roughly 2009 to complete the last of the C-17's that have been already purchased. Sadly, this will end a nearly century long chapter of airplane production in So-Cal.
The title of the Article says it all. They aren't even allowing for combat losses should the situation arise, are they? Is there even a replacement on the drawing board?
That would be my question as well: is there some other credible alternative in the wings? I've heard of a lot of gee-whiz projects for airlift, but nothing that mimics the C-17 profile or extends that profile's capabilities.
There is no concrete replacement at the heavy-lifter level.
Unless you count Russia's huge AN-124, I guess, which continues to enjoy its non-military career as the outsize civilian cargo hauler of choice. It's also used by NATO, via the SALIS consortium, on a lease from a pair of those outsize cargo hauling companies.
So what happens when some clever enemy decides that since fighting our AF toe to toe is suicide anyway, the best move is to launch some sort of one way mission designed to take out all the C-17s they can find? Worse, you could put a dozen terrorists around some airbases around the globe and with a little synchronization and some shoulder fired SAMs you could essentially clip our wings pretty badly for almost zero cost.
The C-17's are being worn out in this war just like the C-141's were worn out in the last war.
We need a lot more C-17's. This is a decision not to have any, or any strategic heavy-lift at all.
The only justification for this is if the Bush administration has decided to surrender to Al Qaeda.
Like everything else in Government, it all comes down to money. We certainly do need more C-17's as inadequate airlift is a perennial problem. However, with huge budget deficits and a ton of money going toward actual operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world, there is limited money for procurement.
The Air Force is in the process of cutting anything it can to get enough money to buy the F-22 and JSF. It should come as no surprise that Big Blue AF prioritizes combat aircraft over logistics, whatever the wisdom of the decision. The last I heard the Air Force is cutting at leasst 40,000 personnel to help pay for recapitalization of aging aircraft.
It sucks that C-17 production is shutting down, but unfortunately, that's the reality in a tight budget full of competing priorities.
If the AF has a penny less money than it has ever had i'll walk on my hands down the runway at Edwards with my pants off.
The Pentagon budget has done anything but shrink the last few years. The 07 budget is set to be 7% higher than 06, and the AF alone is asking for 106 billion dollars. For those keeping score that's the entire GDP of Venzuela, and not far behind Israel. Anyone in the Pentagon pleading poverty makes little chunks of my brain bash against my skull in fury.
Im all for military spending, but the amount of waste is insane.
Mark,
You're quite right - I didn't mean to suggest that waste was not an issue or that the budget is shrinking. I think a lot of issues have come to a head in the past 15 years: Reorganization after the cold war; three major wars; aging equipment (that has been worn down by those wars); technology change; a terribly broken acquisition process; politics; skyrocketing cost of R&D.
There are undoubtedly more.
I'm afraid Andy #11 has identified the core issue. It's sad to see the Air Force put its institutional interests over the strategic interests of the nation, but that's what bureaucracies tend to do.
My first question is: Where is the oversight from the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense to compel the Air Force to adjust its priorities to mesh with national priorities?
My second question is: What does this procurement decision imply about national strategy over the next ten to twenty years?
Somebody is making decisions that will limit the amount of ground combat power that we can rapidly project into remote areas. Given that many of our Islamic foes are based in remote areas, why would you voluntarily limit the amount of combat power you can deploy quickly and the ability to re-supply by air?
"My first question is: Where is the oversight from the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense to compel the Air Force to adjust its priorities to mesh with national priorities?"
That oversite is unfortunately badly trumped by the Congressional oversite which is firmly in the pockets of both the defense industry and their own local manufacturing demands. The procurement situation is crazy, many times the Pentagon is given things it doesnt want and didnt ask for and denied others. This is quite aside from the fact that what the services want may bear little resemblance to what the country needs. Pity the poor army who always ends up on the butt end of both those forces. Nothing glamorous about the C-17 and not enough money to be made pumping them out, imagine how much worse trying to get a decent pistol or boot.
Don't such lift, troop and equipment limitations lead naturally to just using airpower in any future conflicts? Ummmm.
The issue is beyond waste. Essentially, we have a situation where the real cost (i.e. inflation-adjusted) for weapons systems has been rising since the 1950s. Chuck Spinney did some excellent work about that.
It is finally reaching a point where it is becoming a "defense procurement death spiral" wherein each generation is replaced by fewer ships/ planes/ tanks/ helicopters/ whatever of the next generation, and eventually you end up with too few platforms and the inherent brittleness of "low density, high demand" assets.
The rising complexity of these systems also leads to a need for more maintenance, which means less readiness, which means even fewer of the things you're buying are actually available/ fully functional at any given time. It also means more maintenance away from the front due to the specialist skills needed, which drives up operating costs.
Hence the term procurement death spiral.
The reasons for the price rises are manifold, and I'll note the ever-greater amount of electronics as a contributor to both price and complexity. When a new 777 passenger jet costs $200 million or so, it should hardly be surprising that a similar-size cargo jet with short take-off capabilities and a need for a similar avionics set plus more is in about the same price range.
Likewise, Moore's Law re: silicon chip power is expanding the level of the threats faced by fighters and bombers at a pretty rapid clip, and the capabilities required to keep those options viable take either significantly more investment or a major revision in approach (i.e. plane mostly as hanging rack for missiles et. al.) to achieve.
This whole spiral dynamic also creates its own consequences, of course. pressure to have each item do more to compensate for fewer numbers, hence "multi-role" designs that sacrifice excellence in a specific area and also cost more (the initial F-16s, F-15s and especially the A-10 were dramatic and unusual departures from that philosophy). As we've seen, cost affects numbers bought. Fewer items bought means fewer companies making stuff, hence consolidation in the industry. Which drives your buying numbers down again. The resulting industry consolidation can be expected to lead to less innovation, and higher long-term prices. Each generation you go through the spiral makes the issue more acute, leading to further consolidation. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Result: we're now down to 6 major defense companies, some of whom don't make airplanes* (Boeing, Lockheed, BAE, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon*, General Dynamics*). Similar trends have given us 2 makers of large passenger jets that matter (Boeing, EADS Airbus).
I personally think the F-35 is a major mistake, as the fighter originally intended to be the low-cost complement to the F-22 Raptor has become a very expensive mid-high end beast that isn't quite up to the really serious threats, but ridiculous overkill for the other 90% of missions it will fly. Having 9+ international stakeholder countries in it with you, however, makes the program almost impossible to kill. Even as the aging fighter fleet from Reagan's 1980s buildup (whose 5% of GDP spend was significantly higher than the current 3.5-4.0%)is getting to a point where replacements are required.
Ditto the bomber fleet (mostly B-52s from the 1950s-60s; some 1980s B-1s, 21 1990s B-2s but only 7-12 available at any one time), tanker fleet (mostly 1960s KC-135 707s, some 1980s KC-10 DC-10s), and transport fleet (C-130s are heavily 1970s-80s, C-5s are 1960s, C-17s are 1990s under Clinton).
Bottom line: there are a lot of reasons the USAF is in a bind, and the way accounting is done at the Pentagon is a serious hindrance to good decision-making. But "waste" isn't even a meaningful discussion term until we sort out questions of force mix, required capabilities, and trade-offs. At that point, some very efficiently-run programs may start to look very wasteful, while others that appear penny-foolish at first glance may start to look like wise investments. and of coursem those with different views re: force mix et. al. will disagree and see waste in different places.
I'm with you, Joe. We need more, not fewer, of these things.
It is apparent no one here has any idea of what the DoD used to size the C-17 fleet. Just because every C-17 is in use does not mean the fleet is undersized. The fleet is sized to do what the Military thinks it and it alone needs. So if the C-17 is doing humanitarian work, as Thompson's article mentions, then that is extra work, not what the fleet was sized for.
Also, the C-17s are new, not old like the C-141s were during the first Gulf War. The C-141s already had thousands of hours on them and were starting to reach the end of their life by the time the war started. It didn't take much to wear them out.
However, having said that, I personally think the line should be left open.
RHSwan
Joe thats all true, but think about the sheer amount of money we are talking about. 106 billion dollars for one year, just for the airforce. Thats nearly equivalent of having the entire nation of Chile pumping all its goods and services straight into the AF budget, or in other words putting 16 million people to work as slave labor entirely for the air force. That is just flat out staggering. Any argument about money is just moot. You could shift a pebble and drop a hundred million dollars. There are just so many places to save huge (in our terms) chunks of money. Close an Air Force base in Alaska (or Germany for that matter), how many billions would that save, how many C-17s would it build?
The C-17 fleet was originally sized at 240 planes for Cold-War needs. After the fall of the Berlin wall, the projected fleet size was cut to 120 planes, but this proved not enough. A contract for an additional 60 C-17's was let, bringing the projected fleet size to 180 planes.
In the year 2000 the Air Force conducted a study called the Mobility Requirements Study 2005 (MRS-05) to determine the required C-17 fleet size. That study showed an actual need for an additional 42 aircraft beyond the 180 currently under contract.
Since that study, 9-11 has happened, and the demands placed on the C-17 fleet skyrocketed way beyond what the MRS-05 study predicted. The Global War on Terrorism has required moving significant quantities of men and material to remote areas all over the globe. Humanitarian missions have added to this (and are a strategy in the GWOT -- you know, the hearts and minds thing). It is obvious that current requirements are way beyond the 42 additional aircraft required pre-9-11.
Now add Future Combat Systems to the mix. FCS will radically change the way the army fights. To work, it needs to get smallish, fast units with smallish, fast vehicles (compared to an M-1 tank batallion) to remote areas of the globe very, very quickly. Thus, FCS will radically increase the air mobility requirements beyond even post-9-11 levels.
I don't know how many C-17's America needs. Nobody does. But it's painfully obvious the number is much higher than 180.
Mike
Oh, one other thing.
I don't think this comment was aimed at the C-17. Either way, it shouldn't be. Boeing offered to build the 60 additional C-17's (no.'s 121-180) mentioned above for $152 million each firm, fixed price. John McCain doesn't like firm, fixed price contracts (he doesn't like anything other than business as usual, meaning traditional cost-plus contracts), so the Air Force backed off and accepted a traditional contract costing about $175 million / plane flyaway.
That is considerably lower than comparable civillian cargo planes, and those planes can't carry M-1 tanks or Apache helicopters, land on 3,000-ft unimproved runways, perform Y-turns on a 150-ft wide taxiway, or drop items out the back in flight with a low-altitude parachute extraction system.
All things considered, I have to agree with the title of the thread.
Mike
Mark,
For a decent summary of the 2007 AF budget (admittedly from an AF perspective) read this:
https://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/FMB/pb/2007/FY07%20AF%20Budget%20Rollout.pdf
The figures show that 60% of that $106 billion pays for personnel and operations/readiness. In fact, the percentage is almost the same for the entire defense budget. Most other countries can get away with much smaller defense budgets because they don't provide the pay and benefits we do, and instead of operating around the globe, they sit in their bases at home, which is obviously a lot cheaper. Just to pull one fact from the link above - the Air Force has budgeted over a billion dollars just to cover fuel price increases.
Just to piggyback on what Mike said, a huge criticism of the Army after Kosovo was that it was too heavy, and too slow to get into the fight. As Mike indicated, the FCS is designed to be much more deployable on short notice, but it will still require aircraft to make that happen. 180 planes doesn't leave any flexibility, especially considering the current optempo.
RE: Future Combat Systems. The designers have conceded defeat on that one, running up against the same bottleneck that has afflicted that last 2 major land systems now: The C-130 Hercules' 20-ton capacity and dimensions are simply not enough to create a survivable land vehicle that can carry a squad.
which means the only aircraft that can deploy the Future Combat Systems' armored vehicles would be... yep, the C-17 with its 75-ton capacity. And that means FCS won't really be any more deployable than the current Bradleys or Strykers.
Note that the Europeans, with their 35-ton capacity Airbus A400M, appear to have wised up and fit the in-theater air transport to the ground equipment rather than trying to do it the other way around.
Bad news is that cost per A400M will be $100-120 million, which works out to about as much per ton carried as the $65 million C-130J or the $200 million C-17. If you want to break that rule, you seem to need to either buy Russian (the $50 million IL-76MF with more capacity than an A400M but shorter airframe life, so it may all be a wash in the end) or you need radical new technologies - like, say, a new kind of hybrid blimp/airship.
Without that, we're back in a world of hard choices. The difference is that unlike the C-130, which increases the C-17's workload while endangering ground troops and limiting commanders due to weight restrictions, the A400M would reduce the C-17's load and so save the more expensive asset, while giving tactical commanders more options.
Sometimes, the Europeans are right and America has it wrong. The C-130, currently the greatest tactical and mobility bottleneck in the US military, is a good example.
Uh, guys, not everything the military moves into an overseas theater is moved by air. The vast bulk of the Army moves by sea. The airlift fleet is sized to move only that which needs to move quickly -- it's NOT sized to move EVERYTHING.
The size of the C-17 fleet is just one of very many trade-offs that DOD is faced with. If money were no object, we'd have zillions of everything.
The C-17 was given a congressional repreivee by the House and Senate conference committee.
----------------------------------------
Wall Street Journal
September 22, 2006
Pg. 8
Boeing's C-17 Line Wins a Reprieve On New Funding
By Jonathan Karp
One month after taking the first step toward shutting down production of its C-17 military-cargo plane, Boeing Co. won a reprieve thanks to fresh congressional funding.
A House and Senate conference committee yesterday approved a $447 billion fiscal 2007 Pentagon budget bill, which included $2.1 billion for 10 C-17s, Republican Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri said. That is seven planes more than either chamber approved in its own version of the funding bill.
The decision to authorize additional C-17 purchases follows intense lobbying by the Chicago aircraft-and-aerospace company, as well as politicians from California, where the plane is made, and Missouri, where Boeing's defense business is based. The big jet-powered transport plane has won acclaim for war and disaster-relief operations, but the Air Force, beset by competing budget demands, had told legislators that it didn't need more than the 180 C-17s under contract.
In August, Boeing notified nearly 700 suppliers to stop work on C-17s that didn't have confirmed buyers. At the time, Boeing had enough orders to keep making the plane until mid-2009, but said it had to tell subcontractors to wind down because some parts must be ordered 34 months in advance.
Boeing welcomed the fresh funding but a spokesman was unsure how long the new orders would extend production. Boeing has 5,500 workers at the C-17's main plant in Long Beach, Calif., and nearly 2,000 more working on the program at three other sites. Including suppliers, about 25,000 jobs in 42 states are linked to the C-17 program.
Just to clarify- I wasnt bashing the C-17 I was defending it. I understand how the pentagons budget divides up (somewhat anyway), that's not the issue. Its the sheer magnitude that people lose track of. The pie is so enormous it is little more than a rhetorical trick to start debating the percentage of any given peice.
This is largely a game, and it appears to 'work'. The AF pleads poverty on a program they dont particularly love but realize is too important for Conress to let die. But the amount they need to keep it running is miniscule compared to the whole. 2 billion? Whats less than 2% of the AF budget alone! Could you shift 2% of your household budge to buy your kid insulin?
The whole business is laughable, high ticket glamour items like the B2 routinely end up billions of dollars over budget and nobody bats an eyelash. The money is just allocated somehow, because obviously those programs are not going to go away. But a couple billion simple cant be found to keep our only reliable global transport fleet rolling? Riiiiight. Its a game of budgetary chicken, and the AF won.
Trent... 15 planes per year is full production, so every new plane ordered gives Long Beach about another 3 weeks. 7 more planes takes them to mid-2009, I think. 2007 production is spoken for. Now add 10 USA + 4 Australia + 4 Canada + 4 NATO + 1 Britain = 23. Sweden may be in for another 2-3 after that.
Gotta disagree with you on the B2 and similar programs.
What you're missing is the strategic value of pushing the envelope on technologies deployed. The B2 has more than paid for itself by giving us the ability to do what we did in Baghdad in 2003, for instance: take off from another continent, refuel mid-air, go in past defenses, selectively bomb and get out with pilot and plane intact.
When the military opts for advanced technologies it does so, by and large, to create combat advantage. Yes, yes ... I do know about turf protecting and program padding. I was a program manager on the contractor side and supported government program offices in a different role, have seen the process up close. I'll still stand by these judgements, tho.
Again, im not attacking the B2 or any other program- just because a program is a necessity doesnt mean it isnt wasteful. Even that isnt my total point. The issue is when the services have a program that isnt on the top of their wish list, they plead poverty because they have no wish (and often no incentive because they know theyll ultimately get the money) to shift a few bucks or find some way to save the money elsewhere.
This is a giant government beurocracy. Of course its rife with waste. That doesnt mean its not vital, just that every day we are taking shovels full of dollars and shoving them in the furnace. The defense budget is absolutely staggering, that amount of money is unfathomable. What im trying to say is, imagine how much more we could get out of it if the system wasnt so subject to politics and waste.
Decisions and trade-offs seem to be the core of Mark's point, and it is right for them to be so. Let's take the B-2 stealth bomber.
Ultimately, the B-2 can be said to create local combat advantage in ways the B-1 fleet cannot, and certainly the B-52 fleet cannot. As a bureaucracy, the question is whether the cost and low readiness rates/ high maintenance costs of the B-2 fleet were the best use of the money for that purpose. Maybe yes, maybe no.
For instance, if the money had been invested in missiles like JASSM instead (including operational JASSM-ER and XR long range variants), plus EB-52 stand-off jamming aircraft, would the B-1s and B-52s retain the ability to do what was done in Baghdad 2003, taking off from another continent, refuelling mid-air, hitting targets and then coming home safe no problem? Probably - and after the first couple of days, stealth bombers were superfluous there. Would that investment pay dividends elsewhere in the fleet as well? Absolutely.
Now, are there other missions for which a B-2A Spirit stealth bomber is required and missile options insufficient? Probably. How important are they now? How important do we think they'll be in 20 years? What's the value of the real capabilities this option gives the USA (7-12 stealth bombers), in relation to the alternative capabilities one could buy elsewhere for that investment? How important is it to be able to do this at all? (given that it was designed during the Cold War, the answer at the time was obviously "very!") How important is the technology/ R&D to other programs that can use it too? Etc.
This is the kind of mix that goes into priorities decisions, and like a baseball manager's decisions they're always debatable. Those priorities can change, too - which is one reason there are only 21 B-2A aircraft: the USSR collapsed, and with it the biggest reason for buying them.
The question re: the C-17 is whether the USAF is showing a proper set of priorities relative to the US military's overall current and future needs - which by definition means asking what should be given a lower priority. (Recalling, of course, that there are also other services like the Army, Marines, and Navy who may answer the "lower priority" question with the answer "The US Air Force!")
You know whats really sad, is that a proven concept such as the C-17 is getting assed-out and yet the Osprey still seems to have a big following.
THAT really, truly is sad, Gabriel. With you 100%.
I think everyone at the Pentagon, in Congress, and at Boeing that claims the Osprey is safe should be required to fly in one to work every day. I'd be more than willing to see my tax dollars go to that. Better yet, volunteer it to be Marine 1 and fly the president around.