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The Air Force C-27J aircraft used to go the last tactical mile bringing vital supplies to the soldiers in Afghanistan is a program in jeopardy as program and budget cuts loom, the Army Chief of Staff said yesterday.
“The C-27 program looks like it probably might not survive,” Gen. Raymond Odierno said at an Association of the United States Army Institute for Land Warfare breakfast.
The program is being considered for termination in the fiscal year 2013 defense budget, several sources said. The Air Force program, a former joint program with the Army, has been run by the Air Force since 2009.
The Army is quite concerned about it because of its requirement to get the beans, bullets and anything else soldiers need across the battlespace, which is every day in Afghanistan.
“We’re working out an agreement with the Air Force so they will be required to provide direct support… ” Odierno said.
Neither the Air Force nor L-3 Communications [LLL], which leads a team of Finmeccanica’s Alenia North American and Boeing [BA] producing the aircraft, would comment.
For some months, concerned politicians have written in support of the C-27J and its mission supporting the Army to Defense Department officials. On Dec. 20, Ohio’s governor wrote Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, saying elimination of the program “would adversely impact key homeland security capabilities as well as our ability to create jobs.” Two days later, the governors of Maryland, Connecticut, Michigan, Mississippi and North Dakota said the same thing.
The House Army Aviation Conference wrote Army Secretary John McHugh Nov. 15, concerned about Air Force testimony that it might be “abandoning the C-27J as the primary platform to support the Army’s Time Sensitive/Mission Critical Mission (TC/MC).” The letter made it clear Congress supports the aircraft and “expects the Air Force to honor its commitment to support the Army’s TS/MC mission specifically with the C-27J.”
House members wrote in October and November to Panetta and Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter in November, expressing concerns about cuts to the numbers of aircraft to be procured and the need to support warfighters and homeland security.
The C-27J is a medium lift twin-engine aircraft that can land and take off from remote, short and unimproved runways.
The L-3 team won a potential $2 billion-plus contract in 2007 for the aircraft first delivered to the joint Army-Air Force program office in 2008 (Defense Daily, June 14, 2007, Sept. 29, 2008).