The U.S. military’s global transport network needs to grow from it’s current east-west orientation to a more robust en-route infrastructure that can move personnel and material more readily north to south as well, including into regions of growing interest such as Africa, the general overseeing this network said recently.
“The truth is that our network is pretty robust east to west through the developed countries,” Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz, commander of U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), said Dec. 6 on Capitol Hill during a 2007 Air Force Defense Strategy Seminar Series breakfast. “It is not nearly as robust north to south.”
Schwartz said TRANSCOM is “pretty well postured to support contingencies in southwest Asia and northeast Asia.” But his briefing charts showed areas of the globe like Western Africa and Southern Africa where the United States currently has limited reach with assets such as C-17 transport aircraft due to factors like the sparse infrastructure on that continent.
“Perhaps we need to have something in South America that allows us to go east-west instead of north-south,” Schwartz said in addressing the question of how to provide the logistics support to the U.S. military in Africa as it expands its presence there with the newly established U.S. Africa Command. “We are working that angle.”
Establishing access and overflight rights, securing the diplomatic clearances and gaining the use of ports and truck routes are crucial to the United States’ ability to project power in the future, as is maintaining and expanding current relationships, he said.
“Incirlik Air Base is a good example of a vital location that is essential to the support of Operation Iraqi Freedom,” he said of the Turkish site. “Even access through Uzbekistan, which might sound arcane, is important because much of the fuel that goes to Afghanistan traverses Uzbekistan.”
Schwartz said the need for a robust transport infrastructure will only grow in coming decades as more and more U.S. ground troops are based within the continental United States as opposed to residing at forward bases around the world. While roughly 70 percent of U.S. forces were based in the continental United States in 1984, the Army estimates that more than 90 percent of its forces will be based in the continental United States by 2013, he said.
The Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) will remain a “key” component of U.S. transport capability since the U.S. military will never be able to buy all of the transport assets that it needs, he said. Items like pallets, nets and the material handling equipment are also critical to executing the transport missions successfully, he said.
Schwartz said he recommended to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a strategic airlift fleet of 205 C-17s and 111 C-5s. Boeing [BA] builds the C-17, while Lockheed Martin [LMT] built the C-5s in the 1960s and 1980s.
“Since you asked for my personal and professional opinion, I believe 205 C-17s and 111 C-5s is the correct fleet mix for the future,” states Schwartz in his Nov. 6 missive. “I reach this opinion by combining the analysis of available million-ton-miles per day (MTM/D) capability, fleet mission capable rates, the annual flying hour program, average cost per flying hour, total number of organic aircraft tails, available pallet capacity, and average age of the fleet. Taking these factors together, I personally conclude 205/111 is the sweet spot.”
When asked yesterday if his numbers factored the planned increases in size of special operations forces and the Army and Marine Corps, he said: “My assessment is that that is accurate for the foreseeable future.”
The Air Force’s current program of record is to buy 190 C-17s. While the service wants more, it lacks the funds, given more pressing priorities, like a new tanker aircraft, the KC-X. However, the Congress is still mulling adding funding for additional C-17s in the FY ’08. Without new orders in the near term, Boeing has said it will be forced to close the line.
Schwartz said yesterday he told Levin in the letter he could not recommend terminating production of the C-17 due to concern over the viability of the C-5 Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program (RERP). The C-5 RERP is currently in the midst of an Office of the Secretary of Defense-led review since its costs have burgeoned and crossed congressional monitoring thresholds under the Nunn-McCurdy laws. As a result, the Air Force’s leadership has said it may favor not upgrading all 111 C-5s.
Schwartz voiced support for the C-5 RERP.
“I can tell you that the capability provided by the C-5 RERP is needed,” he said.
Moving to the KC-X, which is envisioned as a multi-mission aerial refueling platform, Schwartz said it remains the most pressing transport need.
“It has to have a dual-role use,” he said, referring to its primary role as a tanker and its ancillary capacity to haul personnel and cargo when not needed for the aerial refueling mission. “It will be the game changer over time.”
TRANSCOM wants to be able to leverage the high rates of reliability that a new tanker will provide to utilize the platform up to several times a day in different roles, he said.
“We need to be able to take advantage of that,” he said.
The ancillary transport capability of the new tanker will also serve “as a hedge against dynamics in the CRAF fleet that the government can’t control,” Schwartz told Defense Daily after his presentation. “In the end, we provide incentives and so on, but I worry about CRAF, so I see KC-X as a bit of a hedge against instability in the CRAF.”
Schwartz said TRANSCOM doesn’t know yet how much the new tanker will be utilized as a cargo and passenger mover. “It depends on what aircraft we get,” he said, referring to the two offerings in the ongoing KC-X competition: Boeing’s KC-767 and the Northrop Grumman [NOC] KC-30. The KC-30 is larger and can carry more cargo pallets and personnel.
The bottom line, Schwartz told Defense Daily, is that unlike tankers of old, the KC-X aircraft will be multi-mission machines.
“We need, for the benefit of the joint team, to get as much out of that as we can,” he said, noting, however, that “early in a fight, [KC-X] is primarily going to be a tanker.”
Schwartz told the breakfast crowd that a C-17 was used this week to transport Defense Secretary Robert Gates into Baghdad. In the future, the KC-X may be able to perform missions like this since it will be equipped with aircraft self-protection systems unlike the current tanker fleet.
TRANSCOM has delivered 1,139 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility as of yesterday, Schwartz said. All but 89 of which have been flown into the theater on a mix of military and commercial transports, including the Antonov AN-124 massive-sized cargo hauler, he said.
“The bottom line is that we will keep the secretary’s promise to deliver 1,500 by the end of the month,” he said.
Schwartz said TRANSCOM leases the Antonovs “because they are great vehicle carriers and they take off on time.”
He also said aeromedical evacuation remains a critical mission that is still often underappreciated outside of the military for the important role that is serves in saying lives.
“What we do here is, in my view, fundamental,” he said. “It is a fundamental part of the contract for the all-volunteer force.”