Air Force Community - Air Force Times

Time wasted

It was supposed to be simple.

The Air Force would select a common, off-the-shelf product for its next combat search-and-rescue helicopter, which will replace the HH-60G. The HH-47 was seen as a low-risk acquisition alternative to the Sikorsky S-92 and Lockheed US-101. Then the Government Accountability Office ruled the Air Force was inconsistent when judging the competition and said the losing bidders should be allowed to vie for the work once again. The Air Force now plans to resolicit bids for the contract.

The CSAR-X program started in 1999 with a mission needs statement. Not counting the expected delays resulting from the latest litigation, the HH-47 may reach initial operational capability in 2012. That means it will have taken at least 13 years, from requirement to reality, to bring this pre-existing aircraft into the operational Air Force inventory.

It took the Army only four years to bring the original CH-47 from drawing board to operational delivery: from September 1958 to 1962.

Air Force Materiel Command has more than 80,000 people, controlling more than 36 percent of the Air Force budget and almost 24 percent of its manpower. Why, with all these resources, can’t the Air Force acquire new aircraft in a timely and efficient manner?

The CSAR-X is just one example of how our acquisition system is broken. If we cannot access new technology (or even off-the-shelf technology) in a reasonable manner, then we are not just in a “death spiral,” as one general noted recently, we are doomed.

The KC-135 program began in 1954 when Strategic Air Command placed its first 24 orders. The militarized cousin of the 707 flew in 1956, and we took operational deliveries in 1957. That’s only three years. Starting from the failed Commercial Derivative Air Refueling Aircraft program of 2001 to today’s KC-X program, it’s taken more than six years to pick a new tanker. If we receive operational deliveries in 2012, it will have taken almost a four-fold increase in time over the KC-135 program.

The F-15 program started in 1966 with a request for proposals and was operational in 1974 — only eight years. By contrast, the Advanced Fighter Program started in 1986, and the F-22 just went operational last year, two decades later. The V-22 program office stood up in 1982, and 25 years later it’s still not operational. By contrast, the C-130 program began in 1951, and five years later it was operational.

The Air Force is underfunded. For the last 15 years it has known only flat or shrinking budgets. If the service did this poorly under a “friendly” Congress and administration, we can expect no better from a Democratic-controlled Congress, no matter how eloquently our chiefs state our case.

The fiscal battlefield has changed forever. Yet we still pressed on with business as usual, buying hugely expensive weapons systems that take entire careers to field. In combat, if your tactics do not change to meet new conditions, you will be defeated. We must assume budgets will remain flat or shrink, and adjust our acquisition strategy accordingly.

Since 1986, Boeing has produced 14 new aircraft in the time it took us to field the F-22A. Many of our platforms still can’t use Blue Force Tracking, but my neighbor’s new car has an integrated voice-activated cell phone and a talking Global Positioning System device. Many of our aircraft can’t legally fly GPS instrument approaches, a mainstream of commercial aviation for almost a decade.

So what’s broken with our system? It’s a valid question. The Air Force needs to solve this soon or force shaping will be the least of our concerns.

The writer is an active-duty major stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. He is an instructor pilot and a former intelligence officer. He can be reach at b_braden@earthlink.net