By Michael Sirak
The Air Force’s leadership made the case once again to Congress earlier this week that legislative restrictions on retiring aircraft that have exceeded their useful service lives are draining away critical resources from the service’s much-needed modernization and recapitalization initiatives.
“Our preference would be to be able to manage our own inventory and retire those airplanes,” Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley told the House Armed Services Committee Oct. 24 during a hearing on Air Force strategic initiatives.
The Congress has slowly been coming around to letting the Air Force phase out some of its oldest aircraft and service officials have stressed their appreciation of this support. However, “legislative restrictions on aircraft retirements remain an obstacle to efficient divestiture of our older, least capable, and costly to maintain platforms and equipment,” Moseley writes in the joint statement he provided to the committee together with Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne.
“We are still encumbered with language that prevents us from smartly managing our own inventories of C-5A, C-130E/H, KC-135E, U-2S and B-52H,” they write. Alone in FY ’08, maintaining dated, undesirable assets of these types will cost $229 million, according to the statement. This money, both said during the hearing, could be better applied to newer, more-capable platforms.
A case in point is the Eisenhower-era KC-135E, the oldest aerial refueling aircraft in the fleet.
“The problem is that we have 85 active KC-135Es and we only have 40 that can fly,” Wynne told the committee. Of those 40, he said, more than 13 are being stood down locally by their commanders since they break down too often.
Those E-model airframes that still do fly have to remain in the vicinity of their airfields and cannot deploy abroad, Moseley said.
The Air Force would like to retire all of the E-model aircraft, fill their slots with more-capable KC-135R tankers, and apply the manpower savings and other costs savings to the new KC-X tanker, both senior officials told the panel.
“We desperately need to retire these KC-135Es and move forward with procuring a new, more reliable, more agile KC-X,” Moseley and Wynne write. “Our global reach is at risk without it.”
However, the Air Force is currently precluded by Congress from retiring any of the KC-135Es in FY ’08. Instead, these aircraft must be maintained in a status so that they could be returned to flying status, even if it is not economically viable, Wynne and Moseley said.
“There is a belief, which we have been unsuccessful in disproving, that if you park the airplanes on the sides of the ramp, somehow, when the balloon goes up, those magically transition into five-year-old airplanes or 10-year old airplanes,” Wynne said.
Keeping the KC-135Es in the mandated status saps manpower and resources, both told the panel. For example, maintenance crews have to go out to the parked KC-135Es weekly and turn their tires so they do not wear out in one spot, Moseley said. And roughly once a month, the aircraft have to be towed to an engine facility so their engines can be started and run, he said.
All of the KC-135Es will need to be grounded in 2010 due to safety issues, he noted.
The Air Force faces a similar situation with its C-130Es, the oldest airframes in its medium-sized transport fleet. The E-model fleet averages 43 years in age and the oldest of them entered service in 1961, according to the joint statement.
“More than 20 percent of them are grounded or have flight restrictions preventing them from being useful to the Air Force, and the Fleet Viability Board has recommended monitoring C-130Es closely and retiring them as they become non-flyable,” Moseley and Wynne write.
Considering that the Air Force has an active production line for the new C-130J model, it “makes sense” to retire the E models, they write.
“Yet we are prohibited form retiring any C-130E/H aircraft in fiscal year 2008 and are required to maintain each C-130E tactical airlift aircraft retired after 30 September 2006 in a condition that allows recall of that aircraft to future service even though they may not be flyable,” reads the joint statement.
During the hearing, Moseley cited the case of one C-130E at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, that is in such a decrepit state that it cannot carry any cargo other than the aircrew itself. When this aircraft is retired, the Air Force may not even be able to fly it to its final resting place, he noted.
The chief said he wants to able to retire such aircraft before they become a safety of flight issue.
Moseley acknowledged that he is “feeling frustrated” that the Air Force’s message has not totally gotten through so that all of the legislative prohibitions on retirement are lifted and the service can “put the money in the right place” to recapitalize and modernize the fleet (Defense Daily, March 20, and June 15, 2006).
There appears to be the concern that the Air Force, if given free reign, would retire too many aircraft without having the proper programs in place to replace them with sufficient numbers of newer platforms, he said, when asked for his perspective on the underpinnings of Congress’ reasoning.
But, he said, “The theory that we would ‘overretire’ is a bit shallow because we still have the requirements to meet with U.S. Transportation Command and theater commanders.”
Moseley’s and Wynne’s comments did not fall on deaf ears during the hearing as lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle voiced their support for lifting the prohibitions.
“We are forcing you to choose between requirements and retirements” in a budget constrained environment, said Rep. Rick Larson (D-Wash.). Perhaps, the Congress would do better, if it allowed for more flexibility and “focused more on helping you meet your requirements and less on preventing some retirements,” he said.
Similarly, Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) said the “statutes have put handcuffs” on the service. There is still the opportunity to address this issue in the upcoming conference with Senate authorizers on the final version of the FY ’08 defense authorization bill, he said.