Air Force Says JCA Not Needed for Airlift Mission

The U.S. Air Force's move to eliminate its brand new fleet of 38 C-27J Spartan Joint Cargo Aircraft will have no impact on the service's ability to deliver supplies to ground troops at remote outposts in Afghanistan, according to the Air Force.

The twin-engine turboprop Joint Cargo Aircraft was developed by the Air Force and Army as a way of providing dedicated "time sensitive" tactical airlift of relatively small payloads to remote bases with short, dirt runways -- a mission that some argue that the larger four-engined C-130 Hercules is too big for.

However, the Air Force says that its fleet of C-130s will have no problem performing this mission in support of the Army now that the C-27J is being cancelled.

"The Air Force's commitment to direct support of the Army's time-sensitive, mission-critical airlift requirement remains unaltered," service spokesman Maj. Chad Steffey said in an email to Military.com. "With respect to unimproved and dirt fields, the C-130s are fully capable to support these requirements.  Additionally, the Air Force continues to resupply remote Afghan locations without airstrips through low altitude, low cost airdrops -- 80 million pounds in 2011, nearly double the amount from 2010."

The airdrops Steffey refers to -- where a C-130 parachutes loads of cargo onto small targets -- are an area where the air service has made significant advances in precision capability over the last decade or so.

Earlier in the Iraq and Afghan wars, Army officials complained that it was too difficult to get the Air Force to provide this sort of on-demand airlift with C-130s. The Air Force responded by giving Army ground commanders effective control of small pools of Air Force-operated C-130s and eventually a pair of C-27Js for on-demand tactical airlift and planned to dedicated more C-27Js into this role (the C-130s were never fully under Army control).

Still, ground commanders have complained that the wait is too long for a C-130 load worth of supplies and that in many cases, the Army ends up shipping goods to remote bases via its CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

Just last week, as the two services were expected to be hashing out an updated version of the pact that dedicated the C-27s and C-130s to the Army for use in Afghanistan, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz noted that his service is seeking to retire the 38 JCAs in the Pentagon's fiscal year 2013 budget request. This move coincides with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's Feb.1 announcement that the United States and NATO will end their combat missions in Afghanistan in 2013, one year ahead the previous schedule.

The Pentagon justified sending the brand new fleet of C-27Js to preservation at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona by saying they are a niche capability that is not likely to be needed after the Afghan war. Steffey's statement echoed Pentagon claims that the C-130 is proving adequate to supply Army outposts.

"The C-27J was developed and procured to provide a niche capability to directly support Army urgent needs in difficult environments such as Afghanistan where we thought the C-130 might not be able to operate effectively," Reads the Pentagon's 2013 budget briefing documents. "However, in practice, we did not experience the anticipated airfield constraints for C-130 operations in Afghanistan and expect these constraints to be marginal in future scenarios. Since we have ample inventory of C-130s and the current cost to own and operate them is lower, we no longer need — nor can we afford — a niche capability like the C-27J aircraft."

Asked what impact axing the C-27J fleet will have on DoD's widespread use of civilian contractor-operated airlifters in Afghanistan, Steffey replied, "the Air Force does not contract for tactical airlift missions in Afghanistan, but CENTCOM does (through TRANSCOM)."

While the Air Force says it does not contract out for tactical airlift in Afghanistan, Army troops there are resupplied by civilian-operated tactical cargo planes that can even perform parachute supply drops.