By Jen DiMascio
The House is likely to vote this week on a bill that authorizes the Defense Department to spend $507 billion during this fiscal year.
The wide-ranging bill that sets new policies in terms of acquisition and wartime contracting also mandates the start of a Pentagon-wide roles and missions study that may help resolve conflicts among the services–such as the ongoing dispute between Air Force and the Army over the Joint Cargo Aircraft program under development by a team led by L-3 Communications [LLL].
“There was a question raised about whether or not a new airplane should be under the jurisdiction of the Air Force or the Army,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters last week. “Rather than try to resolve that on a narrow basis. A roles and missions study ongoing would impact on the questions that each of the services have.”
This year, like last year, the Senate version of the authorization bill gave control of the program to the Air Force. The Senate was overruled last year and backed down again this year.
But in a statement from the conference managers, lawmakers make clear that “no one should interpret this action as the conferees having made a judgment as to which military service should operate the Joint Cargo Aircraft or provide intratheater airlift capability to joint force commanders,” the statement said.
The conferees won’t make that decision until after they see the results of the quadrennial roles and missions report, the first of which is to be conducted in FY ’08.
The Army is in line to receive its procurement request for the program, but before doing so must complete a laundry list of reports.
The bill also is directing a mammoth study on intratheater airlift–looking to 2012 and subsequent reports in 2018 and 2024.
That study seeks to get to the heart of another thorn in the side of Congress–how many C-17 Globemasters and C-5 Galaxies the military actually needs.
The Air Force this year pressed hard to be able to retire “bad actors” from its fleet of C-5s, KC-135s and C-130s.
“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 (Defense Daily, Oct. 26).
The bill effectively blocks retirement of C-5 aircraft for another year, but could allow retirements of the other platforms, according to a Senate aide.
Lawmakers nixed language by the House that would have moved toward allowing the Air Force to retire aging Galaxy aircraft, instead opting to abide by past defense authorization acts that prohibit the retirement of C-5s until testing of planes that have undergone refurbishment programs is complete.
Since the Air Force force structure is below the congressionally mandated minimum requirement of 292 aircraft, the service “presumably” wouldn’t have wanted to retire the C-5s, according to a Senate aide. He added that those aircraft may not be as reliable as the Air Force would like, but they still have about 70 percent of their useful life.
The bill allows the retirement of up to 85 KC-135E tanker aircraft once Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne certifies that a contract for the next-generation KC-X tanker is awarded and any resulting protests are resolved, according to the report.
The bill also would allow the Air Force to retire C-130E aircraft once a Fleet Mix Analysis Study required by last year’s defense authorization act is submitted to Congress.
“Both of those should be doable in FY ’08,” an aide said, regarding the KC-135s and the C-130s.