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Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) are planning to introduce an amendment to the 2008 defense authorization bill to strike a provision that would transfer full control of the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program to the Air Force, removing any Army jurisdiction.
McCaskill and Pryor, who have support for their amendment from the chairmen of the National Guard Caucus — Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) — plan to introduce the amendment to the bill by Thursday.
Apart from the backing of the two powerful defense appropriators, the amendment is expected to gather significant support from other delegations and potentially a large number of co-sponsors, according to congressional sources. The National Guard Association (NGAUS) also is putting its weight behind the amendment.
In a “Dear Colleague” letter seeking support for their amendment, McCaskill and Pryor expressed concern that the defense authorization provision “threatens the viability of the entire program, which the Army and the Air Force currently share.”
The provision could lead to the loss of the planned assignment of 54 JCAs to Army National Guard units in 13 states and territories and “jeopardize” the assignment of an additional 24 aircraft to Air National Guard units in eight other states and territories.
The Chief of the National Guard Bureau, Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, and adjutants general across the country are sounding an alarm that a significant delay — or a cancellation — of the program could wreak havoc on the Guard’s ability to respond to domestic emergencies.
Under current plans, the Joint Cargo Aircraft is programmed to be assembled in Florida and Texas and fielded to units of the Army and Air National Guard in the following 21 states and territories: Alaska, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Guam, Indiana, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas and Washington state. If National Guard units in the above states do not receive the aircraft as scheduled, other states will be affected as a delay could hamper the ability of neighboring Guard units to provide timely airlift during natural disasters or homeland defense situations, according to a NGAUS legislative alert.
Questioning whether the Army and Air Force should share the JCA program, Senate defense authorizers are directing the Pentagon to assign responsibility to the Air Force for all fixed-wing airlift functions and missions.
Debate over the two services’ roles and missions has been intensifying in Congress and at the Pentagon since former acquisition czar Kenneth Krieg directed the two services to enter a joint program for a smaller cargo airplane.
Senate authorizers are directing the secretary of defense, acting through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to make the Air Force responsible for fixed-wing support for the Army’s logistics on the battlefield.
The language accompanies a shift of $157 million from the Army’s budget request for the JCA to the Air Force’s budget line.
The Army fears that the language in the Senate’s version of the bill would take away its control of the JCA and prevent it from moving forward.
In an opposite move, Senate defense appropriators fully funded the Army’s request for the JCA but slashed the Air Force’s funding.
The Army has an immediate need for the aircraft while the Air Force is not planning to buy it until 2010.
The JCA program, which was intended to replace the beaten-up C-23 Sherpa and C-12 Huron aircraft, has had a rocky start, with a fair amount of behind-the-scenes controversy and questions as to whether the Air Force is committed to the program.
In June, a team made up of L-3, Alenia North America and Boeing won the contract for the multibillion-dollar JCA with Alenia’s C-27J Spartan aircraft. The losing Raytheon-EADS North America team, which offered the C-295, filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. The GAO response is due Oct. 1, coinciding with the start of the new fiscal year.
While the Army and Air Force share the program office, the Army for the coming year has the lead in the program, also known as the “program executive.” “The more fundamental question is whether this should be a joint program between the Army and the Air Force, or whether this fixed-wing, intra-theater lift mission should be assigned solely to the Air Force,” the Senate Armed Services Committee report said. The panel has heard frequent anecdotes from Army officials about the lack of logistics support they feel has been provided by the Air Force operating the C-130 aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the report that accompanies the bill language. “However, when invited to provide concrete examples that would give substance to the assertions, the Army was not forthcoming,” authorizers said. Without concrete examples, authorizers added, there is no way to tell whether the perceived shortage of support was due to other Air Force priorities or if Air Force operators were engaged fully in supporting the priorities of the overall ground component commander. Authorizers added that the Army’s arguments “have a familiar ring: ‘I can’t count on it in wartime if I don’t own it all the time.’” The same arguments were made against reforms included in the Goldwater-Nichols Act, designed in large part to end inter-service rivalry. |
