Though many current and former Air Force and Pentagon officials acknowledge the military's C-130 fleet has been a true workhorse of late, hauling troops and equipment during ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, they all cede the big airlifter has its limitations. Primarily because of its size, military officials might be forced to look beyond the C-130 when planning a mission in an “austere” area that lacks a conventional runway like those found at U.S. and coalition airbases around the globe.

The solution could well be the Air Force-Army JCA, which is envisioned as the same type of nimble medium-load airlifter the two services operated during the Vietnam War, these officials and defense observers say. An industry official said March 22 that the joint program could come with a price tag of up to $2.7 billion, according to Pentagon documents he has received.

The C-130, referred to by many as the “Hercules,” was designed early in the Cold War era, and was primarily intended to support linear combat operations against a massive conventional Soviet force. Pentagon war plans crafted throughout the Cold War envisioned flying the loaded C-130s to Cold War-era U.S. airfields scattered across Europe -- and the globe -- to support a conventional conflict against the Soviet Union.

But in future operations where U.S. troops are likely to be assigned, according to Pentagon officials and many military scholars, will look very different, pitting American forces against enemies that resemble Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan and insurgent warriors in Iraq, often on very rough terrain with makeshift -- and short -- runways. That means the C-130 would simply be unable to ferry supplies and reinforcements to those areas.

Pentagon brass stress the workhorse C-130 fleet will continue carrying out airlift missions for decades to come, but some senior officials are starting to express their collective belief that for many intratheater lift missions, the JCA will eventually perform many missions traditionally carried out by the Hercules.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley told Inside the Air Force earlier this month that he is interested in exploring whether the JCA could one day be used as a C-130 “surrogate.” The four-star spoke to ITAF on Capitol Hill March 9.

“If I had something like [a nimble JCA platform] in the Afghan campaign and the Iraqi campaign, I would have felt a whole lot better because you can get in and out of smaller places, you can get out of runways that measure just 2,500 feet,” Moseley said last fall at an event in Washington ( ITAF, Oct. 14, 2005, p1).

A Jan. 27 Congressional Research Service report, citing Air University analysis, highlights some of the Hercules' shortcomings. “It does not appear that the C-130 is best suited to deliver supplies and reinforcements to U.S. ground forces operating in remote areas. The C-130 requires approximately 5,000 feet of runway to operate,” states the report, crafted by CRS analyst Christopher Bolkcom.

For instance, the Air University assessment shows “in South America and Central America . . . C-130s can operate from approximately 5 percent of all airstrips (540 of the 10,400 airstrips). In Africa, the C-130 can land on approximately15 percent of all airstrips,” states the CRS study.

That sentiment was echoed last week by senior Air Force and Army officials overseeing the newly joint intratheater airlifter program, under which the Air Force's Light Cargo Aircraft (LCA) and the Army's Future Cargo Aircraft (FCA) programs were folded.

“The C-130 is 40 years old and the backbone of the . . . fleet was based upon the threats and the war fights that we had to be prepared to fight, which were: Europe against the former Soviet Union and Korea. And in those, they [were envisioned as] very traditional war fights,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Andy Dichter, deputy director for joint integration, said March 17 during a roundtable with reporters.

It was envisioned the Hercules fleet would support missions where “we [would] have lots of airfields where we bring the stuff into theater and then we move it forward -- very linear,” the one-star said. “And the C-130 can do that mission very superbly. So we didn't see a need for a lot of different, smaller sized fleets” of intratheater lift aircraft like the JCA until recent years, Dichter added.

Some defense observers, however, doubt the still-conceptual JCA's standing as a C-130 “surrogate” as do Moseley and others.

“The assertion that a smaller intratheater cargo aircraft would be more suitable for future military challenges than the current C-130 is unprovable,” Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told ITAF March 22. “You would need to know more about the nature of future threats and missions than we are likely to know in order to validate such a contention.”

Another defense analyst who closely follows Air Force programs, Richard Aboulafia of the Fairfax, VA-based Teal Group, also questioned whether the new platform is needed to take over some tasks for the C-130 fleet.

“The C-130's range, commonality and flexibility make adding another type look dubious, especially with [U.S. Special Operations Command] getting CV-22s,” he said the same day. “But if the C-130 [modernization effort] dies or gets scaled back, some JCAs might make sense for low-density missions.” Aboulafia noted if Air Force officials view the Army's FCA program as infringing upon the latter service's turf, buying the JCA “only makes sense.”

To that end, Moseley and other Air Force and Army officials have vehemently denied that the two services ever did battle over roles and missions during the days of the dueling airlifter efforts.

The service did once operate airframes similar to what the Army's FCA concept documents and early Air Force requirements for its LCA planes call for, flying C-123 air haulers and C-7 airlifters in Vietnam. Following that conflict, however, those planes were eventually sent to the boneyard. Several former Air Force officials contacted for this story said it was widely believed, at that time, planes of such size were no longer needed.

Shortly after Washington responded to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by invading Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime and battle the al Qeada extremist group, however, that assumption proved false, retired Gen. John Handy, a former U.S. Transportation Command chief, told ITAF March 22 during a telephone interview.

“The Army lacked the capability for a rotary wing aircraft to get to high altitudes and short [landing] strips . . . at longer distances,” Handy said. “A lot of the Afghan mountains are exactly as I just described. Because large airlifters, including the C-130s, could not land in those areas, U.S. mobility planners had to adjust, often calling less-than-ideal audibles.

“We had to hop, skip and jump rotary wing forces, or airdrop by C-17 or C-130, or find another runway within reasonable proximity to land on,” Handy noted. But “none of them really met the dramatic need that we had for something smaller than a C-130, something with two robust engines,” he added.

A requirement for a cargo plane that could carry medium-sized loads could aid U.S.-led operations to battle small -- but effective -- enemy cells in remote and undeveloped locations, Dichter said last week.

“Our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we have pockets of strongholds of U.S. forces, we don't have an infrastructure with highways and roads and safe travels from [an aerial port of debarkation] to the troops in the trenches,” the Air Force official said. That “caused us to pause and look at how we do business, and say ‘is there something here for both our services?'” he added.

And thus, the joint intratheater airlifter program continued its evolution with two big March 22 developments. The first came when the Pentagon's acquisition chief, Kenneth Krieg, signed off on an acquisition strategy report. That was followed hours later when the Army released a long-awaited request for proposals (see related story).

One Air Force mobility official told ITAF this week that JCAs would not be one-for-one replacements for C-130s designated as intratheater airlift platforms. That official, however, added some JCAs “inevitably will fill the gap the C-130 brings to the irregular fight.”

Officials from both services have said the fledgling JCA joint program office could oversee the purchase of about 145 aircraft. And while specific numbers of JCA planes will be tagged to carry out specific kinds of missions, one senior Army aviation official last week warned no decisions have been made about how many will take over lift missions now being carried out inside combat theater by the Hercules fleet.

“Somebody is going to fly some number of that 145, that being my friends in the Air Force,” Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, director of the service's Aviation Task Force, said during the same March 17 briefing. But “it is not necessarily that 100 of those automatically fill the 130. That's why the number . . . as we go back and study, could go higher than 145.”

As the RFP hit the streets last week, only two industry teams had indicated an intention to pursue what likely will be a multibillion-dollar contract. But industry and military officials agree the consolidation of the Air Force and Army programs is likely to produce a much more crowded field.

Alenia Aeronautica and L-3 Communications are poised to offer the C-27J aircraft, an upgraded version of the Air Force's retired C-27 Spartan. The C-27J, based on the C-27A airframe, will have a different avionics architecture, propulsion system (powered by two Rolls Royce AE 2100 engines), landing gear and more. Additionally, Raytheon and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company's CASA North America have teamed up to offer two aircraft for the Army's FCA program -- the C-295 and CN-235.

As the services step up efforts to form a joint program office and review the industry teams' initial proposals, Handy suggested the military should resist the urge in coming decades to again send its medium-lift aircraft to the bone yard.

“The way I look at this is . . . historically, we've needed these kinds of aircraft. And the aberration may be that we didn't have them,” Handy told ITAF. “ So we're kind of getting back to what ought to be normal. And as we project forces around the world, we will invariably find ourselves in austere environments, or not, and you . . . want to have this capability in your toolkit all the time. The fact that you need it ought to be a given.”