By Emelie Rutherford
Pentagon leaders fought off suggestions from senators yesterday that more of Boeing‘s [BA] C-17 cargo aircraft may be needed, foreshadowing a potential weapon-system battle during fiscal year 2011 budget deliberations.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, appearing before the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee (SAC-D), reiterated to Boeing-friendly lawmakers that he “will continue to strongly recommend that the president veto any legislation that sustains the continuation of the C-17 or the F-35 extra engine.”
Lawmakers in general have not been outspoken thus far in pushing to buy more C-17s, beyond the 223 already funded, during this FY ’11 budget cycle in Congress. None of the cargo aircraft are included in the versions of the policy-setting defense authorization bill that have cleared the full House and a Senate panel.
Yet the cargo haulers have support among appropriators who will craft the FY ’11 budget-dictating appropriations legislation, including SAC-D Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and members Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.).
Murray and Bond raised concerns yesterday about the future of industrial base for wide-body military aircraft.
Murray tied the C-17 concerns to the Air Force’s solicitation for the KC-X aerial-refueling tanker, and her fear that foreign-based European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) will beat Chicago-based Boeing for the aircraft contract.
“I’m very concerned if this is awarded to Airbus (which EADS owns), the KC-X, that we would have absolutely no wide-body military aircraft production left in our country, leaving us very vulnerable in the future,” Murray said.
Bond took issue with the Pentagon’s latest Mobility Capabilities Study, which reinforces the military’s currently programmed strategic airlift fleet of 223 C-17s and 111 of Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] C-5 transport aircraft. The Pentagon’s planned number of C-17s grew in recent years to 223, from a previous target of 180, after lawmakers consistently funded additional aircraft over Pentagon objections.
The Pentagon’s FY ’11 budget proposal again calls for halting additional C-17 buys, and Gates has repeatedly said he will recommend President Barack Obama veto the FY ’11 defense budget bills if more C-17s are added.
“The Mobility Capabilities Study will not address the possibility that the nation may need to surge in production of airlifters in response to a national emergency or a humanitarian crisis like Haiti,” Bond argued. “And I question the validity of the single study, which doesn’t take in to consideration the need of an industrial base.”
The senator, who is retiring this year, called the move to fund no more than 223 C-17s “particularly troubling,” because C-5As are reaching the end of their service lives, and “because there will not be a single facility in North America anywhere assembling large aircraft designed to military specifications.”
Gates maintained the Pentagon will be using C-17s for decades, and the United States has “significant wide-body aircraft production capability” that could be adapted for military purposes, if needed.
He said that the last three mobility studies accounted for a stressed strategic environment as well as increased end-strength in the military and the ability to carry large equipment such as Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.
“So we have a substantial capability that takes into account really all of the stressed environments,” Gates said, “and I think that we do have in the United States a capability, an industrial base, that is capable of building wide-body aircraft, and over the period of time that we’re looking at, the ability to adapt whatever is needed to meet military specifications.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen told Bond while he shares the senator’s industrial base concerns he “cannot find a requirement for additional C-17s, as hard as we looked.”
“We’ve looked at it time and time again,” the top military officer said. “We just don’t have a requirement beyond the 223 C-17s, and there are some that would argue that that is actually too many.”
Mullen said “there’s no easy answer” regarding helping the industrial base.
“The only way that I’ve seen that successfully addressed in the past is a strategic relationship (among Congress, the Pentagon, and industry)…to make sure that we look at meeting our requirements and our ability to sustain a very important industrial base at an affordable cost. And that then gets into acquisition and how we do things.”
Gates repeated arguments yesterday against funding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s alternate second engine, developed by General Electric [GE] and Rolls-Royce. Inouye has expressed support for continuing to fund the engine and questioned Gates’ stance, citing problems with the overall F-35 program.
Gates shot back at speculation that Obama would not veto a defense bill that funds unwanted programs such as the alternate engine while also including changes the White House wants to the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy on gays in the military.
“It would be a very serious mistake to believe the president would accept these unneeded programs simply because the authorization or appropriations legislation includes other provisions important to him and to this administration,” Gates said.
He also warned if Congress does not pass the final FY ’10 war-funding supplemental by the Fourth of July congressional recess the Pentagon will be forced to do “stupid things” with its existing budget, including beginning “planning to curtail defense operations.”
Current war funding for the Navy and Marine Corps would start to run out in July, before such monies for the Army would start to dry up, he said. If the Navy and Marine Corps funds run out, the Pentagon would turn to operations and maintenance money in the base defense budget, “causing us to disrupt other programs,” Gates said. If the war supplemental isn’t passed by early-to-mid August, he said, the Pentagon could have to furlough civilian employees and be faced with the active-duty military personnel it cannot pay.
The Senate passed a supplemental on May 27 with $33.5 billion in war funding, though the House Appropriations Committee canceled its markup of the supplemental that had been planned for the same day. The legislation has remained stalled.