28 July 2019

The Sorry State of US Military Airlift Capability


The USAF has a problem. It doesn't have enough planes for transport roles today and in the future. Worse its not doing much about it. This is a problem and it needs fixing.

 
(Photo source USAF)
 
This piece will hopefully be mercifully short. Because it is embarrassing. I want to bring this data to the front of mind because I believe we have an immediate requirement (more C-17s) and a long term replacement aircraft long haul tactical transport aircraft that can transport almost anything the US needs to deploy. (Let’s call it the C-X). 

The US has no airlift capability designed or contemplated past the current capability which consists of 3 forms. Infleet and outsourced. Here are the numbers:
Mobility Capability Fleet Size
Estimate
Unit of Measure
Strategic Airlift Aircraft
275
C-17/C-5
Commercial Airlift: Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF)
257
Cargo/Passenger
Theater Airlift Aircraft 300 C-130
300
C-130

Here are the statistics for the US Air Force’s Heavy Lift capability. There are 4 types in fleet aircraft that are capable of hauling a tank. These are listed below. Note: a slight discrepancy between the numbers is due to the dates. The Fig 1 is likely to be the most accurate from Jan 2019 for estimates of the fleet in 2023. For information on the CRAF fleet go here: https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104583/civil-reserve-air-fleet/ The large capability does not include any aircraft that can transport a tank. 

Type
maker
Class
Role
Introduced
In service
Lockheed
Jet
1970
52
Boeing/MD
Jet
1995
222
Lockheed
Turboprop
1956
176
Lockheed
Turboprop
1996
186
Boeing/MD
Jet
1981
59
Boeing
Jet
2019
11
Lockheed
Turboprop
1954
10

For the purpose of this article I will concentrate on the big airframes – the C-5M and the C-17A.
Due to the low amount of flying the USAF does of its aircraft the serviceability requires that the aircraft typically spends 3-4x each flying hour in the shop being fixed. At any one time the Air Force aims to have operational about 50% of this capacity. The USAF has a group who is focused on transport. USTRANSCOM. Here is its latest report: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Lyons_03-05-19.pdf In my humble opinion it’s not doing even that well. Published rates of aircraft that are currently available to fly have decreased every year since, well a long time. Using recent statistics the numbers have continued to fall. That number has falled by 8 percentage points. In fiscal 2012, 77.9% percent of all aircraft were deemed flyable. By fiscal 2017, that metric had dropped to 71.3 %, and it dipped further to 69.97 % in 2018. And the C5 has some of the worse numbers. Recently the availability for the F-35 (A/B/C models) dropped to around 35% for a variety of reasons but mostly missing parts. For more detail go here. It’s not like this isn’t a secret, but we have to start focusing the attention on this topic. If the current and future Administrations are going to be warmongering, as their previous generations were, then mission availability is critical. And currently it is pretty bad. https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/07/26/aircraft-mission-capable-rates-hit-new-low-in-air-force-despite-efforts-to-improve/ It would be good to compare their rates to say… someone like the UK and Singapore. 

There are numerous stories that can be easily found of C5s that don’t complete their missions on the scheduled time. http://web.archive.org/web/20040112233408/http://www.afa.org/magazine/Jan2004/0104galaxy.asp  As the USAF does not publish any performance stats in the same way commercial aircraft operators do – we cannot see the actual performance numbers. The C5M is one of the most expensive aircraft to operate. The last data I can find is from 2016 where the cost was over $100K per hour of operation. https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-plane-cost-per-flight-hour-chart-2016-3  So a typical mission from USA to Afghanistan and back would be about 20 hours each way. So $4 million a roundtrip. I am sure there is many an airline bean counter who would like to have that as his revenue number. If you want to be really geeky about Aircraft operating costs in the USAF, there are a few think tanks who dive into the Congressional data. Here is one from the Rand Corporation from 2015. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1178/RAND_RR1178.pdf A relatively short report but it will require you to dust off your regression analysis capability. 

As one C-5 pilot confided in me the plane was probably older than HIS/HER father. IE not inconceivable that the same airframe was flown by the current fleet pilots’ grandfathers. (There were no female C-5 pilots I could find in this research when the plane entered the fleet).
The latest talk is about extending the airframe out to 2060. Really??? The latest version of the C-5 (with remanufactured airframes) re-entered the fleet in 2018. The biggest change was that the engines were replaced with CF6s. Yup a 45 year old design. 

The C-5M is not the real workhorse of the fleet, that is the C-17A. A sprightly young thing who first flew in 1975 (as the YC-15). The bad news is that in October Boeing put the production line facility up for sale once the moratorium on the sale was lifted. The last C17 was delivered to the USAF in 2013. Production continued for another few years but now that’s all done. Using the same logic – the C-17 should therefore last into the next century. (Stick with me here, if the original life span can be extended from a 1970 in service aircraft for 90 years then a 1995 aircraft should last more than 100 years. Eisenhower must be spinning in his grave). But not to worry, the Air Force actually started to mothball some of the oldest ones in the fleet in 2012.  

There is no new design planned for large scale transportation for the US military. The US issued a study in early 2018 to look at the issue.  https://www.defensedaily.com/dod-starts-study-airlift-sealift-tanker-needs/air-force/  The resulting report is pretty thin. Here is the published version. http://www.airforcemag.com/DocumentFile/Documents/2019/MobilityCapabilitiesRequirementsStudy2018.pdf The actual numbers the Air Force is talking about is a further 3 C-17 squadrons and another 2 C-130 squadrons. But as we saw above there is no facility for producing any new C-17s. 

Perhaps there is something in Europe? Well the troubles for the A400M aircraft are well documented but at least there is a live production line. Current rate 9 aircraft in 2019. It could fly a lesser capacity payload compared to the C-17. https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/compare-aircraft-results.asp?form=form&aircraft1=33&aircraft2=820&Submit=Compare+Aircraft

So there you have it. We have a problem and its urgent. We need to fix it. How?
Here is what I propose. For the short term, The USAF will have no choice but to add capacity and the A400M is it. The C-130x is not a possibility. So that is unless you want a Russian (IL-76, An-124), Chinese (Y-20) or possibly Brazilian (KC-390) aircraft. No way can the C-17 be delivered unless they are re-manufactured ones from the desert. 

For the C-X system, we should be looking at the requirement of a non-traditional heavy lift aircraft that can operate at a far lower cost per hour but last a really long time at relatively low rates of utilization. This has to be crewed but with a small crew capability with UAV support as back up. There are no current designs that should be considered.  The C-X should comprise a all new frame using a significant set of COTS components that can address the near term design issues.
Best of luck with this. I really hope someone wakes up and takes notice.

Cheers