GAO Challenges Air Force on Its Landing-Takeoff Claims for C-17 : Aerospace: The watchdog agency says the cargo jet’s advantage over its chief rival has been overstated.
The General Accounting Office said Monday that the McDonnell Douglas C-17 cargo jet can land on less than half of the nearly 10,000 foreign airfields that the Air Force has claimed in justifying the $43-billion program.
Despite years of assertions by the Air Force that the plane has a revolutionary capability to land and take off at unimproved airstrips, the GAO found that many of the foreign fields are too weak to support the weight of the C-17, which is made in Long Beach.
An Air Force spokesman declined to comment, saying the service had not yet seen the GAO’s report. But in recent congressional hearings, senior Air Force officials have sharply disputed similar criticism raised by Rand Corp.
The plane has survived a number of technical setbacks, and it is too early to say whether the latest revelation will cause serious political damage to the program. The Air Force has said the planes will cost an average of $325 million over the life of the program--by far the most costly cargo jet in history.
The Air Force has long asserted that the C-17 can land at about three times as many airfields as the rival Lockheed C-5B jet--9,900 for the C-17 compared to 3,500 for the C-5B--a crucial capability for supporting U.S. military operations in remote parts of world.
The C-17 is designed to land and come to a stop in less than 2,000 feet, enabling supplies to be flown directly from U.S. cargo bases into foreign battle zones. The plane features a new design in which the engine’s thrust blows over the wings to create extra lift on landing and takeoff. But that might have little value if foreign runways are too weak.
The new GAO report examines the strength of those 9,900 foreign airfields and concludes that 6,198 of them are too weak structurally to support the weight of a fully loaded C-17.
After examining the data of the Defense Mapping Agency, GAO investigators found that the C-17 can land at just 911 more airfields than the C-5B--not the 6,400 originally claimed. Moreover, of the 2,800 foreign fields actually visited by American teams, the C-17 could land at only 95 more fields than the C-5B, not including those in North America.
McDonnell Douglas spokesman Larry McCracken, reflecting years of rebutting criticism of the C-17, remarked, “Give me a break.”
While McCracken said he had not seen the GAO report, he disputed it nonetheless, saying: “That sounds unbelievable. There have to be more than 95 airfields in the world that this thing can operate in and the C-5 can’t. Just look at the map.”
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), a frequent critic of the C-17, said the GAO’s findings “that only a handful of airfields require the C-17’s special short landing and takeoff abilities raises even more doubts about its value.”
Every airplane is rated for the stress it puts on a runway, known as a load classification number, or LCN. For the C-17, the number is 48, meaning it needs to land on a runway with an LCN number of 48 or higher or else risk serious accelerated wear to the runway.
The military plans to use the C-17 on runways rated as low as 20 in a war, which would cause serious damage after only 100 landings and takeoffs, according to GAO officials. But even based on those plans, 6,198 of the original 9,900 runways are still too weak to handle the C-17, according to the GAO.
“We are not saying the C-17 doesn’t have an advantage,” GAO analyst Tom Denomme said. “All we are saying is let’s be realistic. There are not thousands of runways the C-17 can land on that the C-5 can’t.”
The GAO report says, for example, that only two austere airfields in Korea and one in Saudi Arabia would be likely to get any use by the C-17 in wartime, even though the Air Force has cited potential conflicts in Korea and Saudi Arabia as a military need in supporting the C-17’s cost.
