DUBAI, United Arab Emirates–The Air Force is looking to build partnerships in the Middle East in the realm of airlift since there is a need both for tactical and strategic capacity in the region, the service’s top international representative said here Sunday at the 2007 Dubai Air Show.
“Lift is a big deal. Why? Everybody needs it,” Bruce Lemkin, deputy under secretary of the Air Force for International Affairs, said during a meeting with reporters when discussing the areas in which he sees potential for deepening ties in this part of the world.
“We just did a C-17 demonstration in Qatar. We are doing a C-130J demonstration next week,” Lemkin said Nov. 10, referencing Boeing‘s [BA] large-sized Globemaster III and Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] medium-sized Super Hercules transport platforms, respectively.
Further, he said, the United States plans to host the second in a series of international conferences on the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) Dec. 12 in Washington, D.C., that is open to nations of the Middle East, as well as those from other parts of the world. The JCA is the new Army-Air Force light transport aircraft based on the Finmeccanica‘s Alenia C-27J design. L-3 Communications [LLL] is leading the industry team that includes Alenia North America, Boeing and Global Military Aircraft Systems that will supply the platform to both services, starting with the Army before the end of the decade.
The Air Force is promoting the establishment of a multinational consortium of JCA operators similar to the successful model created for the F-16 fighter jet. Today, about 24 nations, including NATO members and Middle Eastern, South American and Southeast Asian countries, fly more than 4,000 F-16s worldwide together with the United States, thereby strengthening interoperability and cooperation amongst these air forces.
“Every air chief I know almost without a doubt in the world needs this capability,” Lemkin said of the JCA, which is designed to haul several pallets of cargo into austere areas. “Sure, it has direct combat support capabilities, but also the utility for humanitarian and natural disaster relief and a whole spectrum of things that a nation needs to take care of its territory and people.
“So we are very excited about this program,” he said.
The first JCA conference in November 2006 attracted 25 nations, Lemkin said, adding that he expects to December meeting to attract a larger crowd.
In addition to a market in the region for the JCA, Lemkin said some of the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have expressed to him the desire to acquire their own Boeing’s C-17s. The Globemaster III has strategic intertheater reach as well as serving ably in tactical roles.
“There are GCC countries that have the resources that are interested in acquiring C-17s and they have told me, one of the principal reasons is so they can provide humanitarian and disaster relief,” he said. “Look at what our world has been through in that area in just the last few years, the Pakistani earthquake, the Asian tsunami and our own Hurrican Katrina. Many nations looked and said, ‘I don’t have the capabilities to go provide the kind of aid and assistance I would like to.'”
C-17 maker Boeing has previously mentioned Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as potential C-17 buyers in the Middle East.
“There is maybe a possibility,” Lemkin said, when asked, that GCC members may cull resources to procure a number of C-17s similar to the manner in which 17 NATO members have created a program collectively to acquire and operate three and perhaps more Globemasters.
“A consortium like that has great benefit to us because now other nations that couldn’t necessarily afford to buy a C-17 on their own come together to acquire them [and] be interoperable with us,” he said. “They can carry out functions that we might have had to do whether it is…combatant support or even more so humanitarian- and disaster-relief operations.”
Lemkin reinforced the message that his job is to build relationships with partner air forces around the world.
“We’re an expeditionary Air Force,” he said. “For us to be able to carry out that, we have to have those relationships. Plus, we cannot fight and win the global war on terrorism without friends and partners not only with their own capabilities to maintain their own security, but the will to go and, when appropriate, go and join us in coalitions.”
While the airplane is the centerpiece in an air force-to-air force relationship and “there is no substitute for flying the same airplane that the U.S. Air Force has,” Lemkin said the service’s engagement goes well beyond just the platforms.
Indeed building concepts of operations and hardware interoperability, such as common datalinks, with the partners is also a thrust area, he said. But it does not stop there as fostering airman to airman exchanges and providing support in training, maintenance and logistics support are also critical.
“We are the only country that talks about, when somebody acquires a system from us, that it is the whole package: the training, the systems maintenance,” he said.
This really makes a difference when dealing with complex pieces of military equipment, he noted.