Now, This Is a REALLY Good Idea . . . .
Have I got a deal for you. How about we buy a bunch of stuff, then immediately put it in “mothballs” instead of use it? Good deal, right?
Uncle Sam and DoD certainly would never do that with a bunch of new airplanes – right?
Think again. As in to the tune of over $565 million.
I understand that at some point terminating a contract just doesn’t make economic sense. But couldn’t we have figured this out before we ordered 21 of these?
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Air Force, Military issues
It’s rather like thousands and thousands of federal jobs, only the job situation is worse. They are expensive and wasteful. There isn’t a person working in federal gov’t who can’t identify at least three co-workers who are absolutely useless or their work totally devoid of value. At least the planes can be sold, even as scrap.
Rather like the C-17s the Air Force didn’t want but were forced to buy because they were made/supplied from various influential politicians’ home districts.
Y’know, in some ways having Congress out is a GOOD thing.
Thats a shame! Those C-27s are some pretty bad ass cargo planes. SOCOM ordered more than the airforce is buying. Some are even half and half variants with have of the cargo bay converted into an airline style seating area.
So it’s an expensive C-130.
Thanks, Congress.
hell, even I know the Air Farce doesn’t want small tactical air lifters like this. They only want C-130s and larger theater air lifters. The Army bought the Sherpa because of this.
@2
The Army brass earlier in the year got an offer it couldn’t refuse from CONgress on purchase of $400M+ worth of unwanted M-1 MBTs.
@#5 I’m not sure what a Sherpa is, but if it’s a fixed wing cargo plane I’m surprised. The Army was flying C7 Caribous in Viet Nam but had to turn all of them over to the AF around mid ’67. Something to do with an agreement the services made back in the late 40s. Army did get to keep the Mohawk for intell missions, as I recall.
I thought that the c-27j was bought by the army during the Iraq war because the air force was being non complaint in the army needs for resupply. The reasoning being that the army knew better about its logistical needs and would be better at filling them than the air force. Then the air force pulled some strings and got them taken away from the army because only the air force can have large fixed wing cargo planes. Why is anybody defending the c-130, isnt the design almost 50 years old? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to replace the old things with better designs on new airframes. I dont see anybody defending the c-141.
Funny thing about those planes is that the Air Force did not want them to begin with, until the Army tried getting them and the Air Force bitched they were encroaching on the Air Forces territory. What a waste of fucking money
@7 this is a Sherpa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_C-23_Sherpa I saw them go buzzing by sometimes on my second tour in Iraq.
And I remember reading about the STOL cargo plane thing. The story I read was that the Air Force convinced congress that they could better support and maintain a fleet of planes like that. As soon as the planes were transferred to the Air Force they declared them obsolete and got rid of them, tying the Army to the Air Force for fixed wing support and tying itself to larger fixed runways.
@ Hondo, I can without a doubt count way more than 3 co-workers who are as useless as tits on a bull. One in particular doesn’t even know how to open her e-mail, but sure knows how to run to the Union and claim age discrimination. Others that consistently come in late, leave for an hour or two, then leave early for the day…. Waste, it is a way of life for a lot of them. Then there are the good ones though, and you will never hear about them. They never make the news.
Oh I have an idea let’s use those planes to fly WWII vets so they can see the memorial which took a while to get but that honors them!! oh wait .. nevermind is closed by bananarama…
@9, that’s the only reason the Air Force ever agreed to a mud mover like the A-10, the were freaked out over the AH-56 Cheyenne taking over the CAS roll for the Army.
@13.
That A-10 was/is an amazing plane.
For a short time the USAF was contemplating divesting themselves of the A-10. I worked with them (doing joint air attack training) and loved them, and when the Army considered taking them I was ready to volunteer.
Then, USAF said we could have the airplanes, but none of their budget or people to support them, and the Army balked. Then Operation Desert Storm happened and they werre used for their designed mission…politically untenable for USAF to divest then.
The A-10 is amazing, and I remember the last time the AF tried getting rid of it, the Army said they would take it and what do you know the boys in blue said no… we’ll keep it in our inventory. They hate the CAS and Cargo role, but hate the idea of handing it over to the Army even more. Hell even with UAV’s they have been throwing hissy fits about the Army getting any that are too big and or capable.
@14, oh I agree, but if you read the biography of Col John Boyd, none of the Air Force brass were keen on a DEDICATED CAS plane. They only wanted faster multiroll aircraft. But when they realized the could lose the CAS roll to the Army’s Cheyenne, and the dollars that go with it, they got onboard.
Guy I served with, his father was a Army aviation Warrant in the late 80’s and into the 90’s. Said his father told him the Army was all for taking on the A-10 when the Air Force was thinking of dumping it.
I have a better idea Dickweeds. Let’s furlough 400 K federal workers for say two or three weeks and vote to pay them for work not done while we watch everything go to sh!t!
Stuff that in your pipe and snmoke it!
The A-10 still is an outstanding airframe. It can fly drunk, shot up, out of fuel, and pissed off at its pilot while putting a hurt on the enemy!
Pilots say it flies like a Cesna 150. You can push it to the edge all day long.
It was a bad idea in 48 and it is still a bad idea, so lets take the Army Air Corps back and unify the service as it was originally conceived. More money has been wasted in inter-service rivalry than has been saved. Hell who had the great idea that a supersonic jet was a good in the ground support role? The A-10 was the last purpose built ground support airplane added to the inventory. At least the marines have Harriers and they can forward deploy.
Yeah, after reading this on FOX, I nearly blew a fuse.
The Chair Force hasn’t had a real offensive mission since they closed the B-29 bases in the Marianas in the late ’40’s. The true value of the AF was revealed in the Berlin Airlift in the late ’40’s. When the Polaris boats went to sea, the AF part of the “Triad” was rendered moot. When you really depend upon them for some sort of offensive back-up, the Chair Force is on some sort of “Stand Down” day for training or whatever (as I found in the Persian Gulf in the late ’70’s). Logistics should be the main mission of the AF, a mission that they are able to do well. My contemporaries from the old ‘Nam days talked about the value of AF CAS compared to Navy or Marines… the AF was not the preferred asset. And the A-10, an outstanding CAS asset, the AF doesn’t want (and never really embraced) because it ain’t sexy and cool and can’t dogfight with a MIG-3X. The C-27J is exactly what the boys in blue should be driving, doing the job to supply the needs of the forces able to take the fight to the bad guy. It is time to reverse the Johnson-McConnell agreement from the ’60’s with the Army and allow the Army back into the fixed wing business. Give the Army the C-27J’s and let the Chair Force sit in their padded recliners in Nevada remote-controlling away.
If you guys are really interested in how this situation came to pass, here are some links that touch on the past history:
http://asc.army.mil/docs/pubs/alt/2010/2_AprMayJun/articles/26_The_Joint_Cargo_Aircraft_%28JCA%29–Transfer_of_an_Acquisition_Category_%28ACAT%29_1D_Program_to_the_U.S._Air_Force_%28USAF%29_201002.pdf
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/ac-xx-gunship-lite-a-c-27j-baby-spooky-05001/
Here is the Cliff Notes version: About ten years ago, the Army and USAF decided to split the C-27J buy, with each branch getting about their half. AFSOC was going to turn most of theirs into AC-27 Stinger II gunships, with the Army using theirs for FOB support downrange. Then Big Blue (non-SOF USAF) pulled the plug on their end of the bargain, screwing over both AFSOC and the Army. The Air National Guard liked the aircraft, fought back and flew them for a while, but didn’t have the money to take over the whole program. The USAF tried to pay lip service to COIN ops and set up a training program in Afghanistan for C-27Js, then put one of the worst Lt Cols in the entire USAF in charge of the unit(yeah, he was in my unit, and we couldn’t wait until he left, a grade-A asshole who was also a complete idiot.) Now, no one, including the Afghans, wants them or can afford them. So, to the boneyard they go.
I’m probably the most experienced Air Force guy on this forum (unless some other wing-nut on here has more than 20 years on active duty) and I can bear witness to how FUBAR the USAF has become. They really are as bad as they appear to everyone else in the DoD. The decision to kill the A-10 was just the tip of the iceberg, stand by for some truly crazy shit to be coming from Big Blue in the future….
“Rather like the C-17s the Air Force didn’t want but were forced to buy because they were made/supplied from various influential politicians’ home districts.”
Because, as well all know, the USAF has absolutely enough airlift to accomplish any mission required of it in the future. Also, please ignore all those Russian and other foreign cargo planes they had to lease to support Afghanistan and Iraq. Those will always be available.
Spade – didn’t say they had enough to do anything any time etc… but when the hearings came up on 15 additional C-17s they did not want ’em. Congress, driven by jobs in a key manufacturing states (CA), funded them anyway.