Foundation Forum
General Walter Kross
Commander, Air Mobility Command
CINC TRANSCOM
Feb. 26, 1998
"Global Engagement Today: Air Mobility
Readiness Challenges."
We really like your theme this year: Global Engagement: Making the
Vision Operational. That is what we in the mobility air forces do today.
We facilitate global engagement by getting the warfighter to the fight,
or the peacekeeper to the hot spot, or the humanitarian to the natural
disaster. Without our mobility air forces, most of our nation's top
notch warfighting capabilities stay in the starting blocks. That is why
it is so terribly important for us to have trained people, reliable
resources to get there any time, anywhere with extremely short notice.
Let me use our ongoing deployment to Southwest Asia in both
directions as an example. First, it has been a total-force effort:
active, Guard, Reserve and our commercial partners. Above all else, the
Guard and Reserve volunteerism has kept our heads above water as our
active-duty crews flew at wartime rates. Over the last three weeks,
we've moved the equivalent of about 500 C-17s worth of cargo and
passengers, or about 12,000 short tons of cargo and about 10,000
passengers. Plus, we've flown 175 tanker missions. Over the next few
days, we'll finish moving Army forces out of Georgia, Marines out of
California and a variety of command and control communication units from
other locations. And we'll keep our tankers on alert at six other
locations. Even when we are in the midst of this deployment that eats up
a huge portion of our capabilities, we still have scores of other
customers all over the world who need our support, as always.
Fortunately, again, the Guard and Reserve have been willing to go to
great lengths to fill this world-wide gap for us.
The total force air mobility turns the global engagement vision into
operational reality. When all is said and done, in terms of sheer
numbers of airplanes, we are talking scores of mobility air force
airplanes required to deploy our expeditionary forces, our Patriot
batteries, our division-ready brigades.
This commitment might not sound like a lot in terms of airplanes and
people, but since we no longer maintain a robust overseas presence, we
are a CONUS-based (Continental United States) force and it is a bill
we've got to pay. This means that if we want to reach out and touch
someone, we have to lay on an air bridge that allows us to move all the
way from the United States non-stop to a spot anywhere in the world, to
a dusty airfield on the frontier, so that we can make our presence
directly felt. Whether or not there is a contingency going on, on any
given day our mobility air forces are in high gear.
Let me give you a snapshot. Today, 275 air mobility aircraft and more
than 2100 personnel are deployed to 25 overseas locations in a
contingency context. Today, we will fly more than 300 missions in
support of every regional CINC and every service. We've got some
incredible capabilities. No other nation has these capabilities. No
other nation can do what we do with our organic forces, leveraging the
cutting-edge transportation corporations in America today.
But to maintain this capability, we have some significant readiness
challenges we need to confront and we can't wait too long. Number one on
the list of readiness challenges is our logistics system. The leadership
of the Air Force recognizes that we may have over-reengineered our
logistics system a bit, and we need to focus more on the critical
processes that deliver firsthand the things we need to maintain our
readiness. The pressure to reform and reorganize has often dominated
while we undercapitalize the process instead of tending to our real
needs. Most importantly, we need the right spare parts at the right
locations at the right time in good working order and at a reasonable
cost. That is the ball we should keep our eyes on. Because of our high
optempo and shrinking overseas infrastructure, this is more important
than ever. We fly into hundreds of locations where we have no
infrastructure. We can't afford to leave broken aircraft behind, any
more than we can afford to have them stranded in the CONUS. That is why
we spent a good portion of this week here at Corona working through this
issue very hard. We've made some excellent progress with short-term and
long-term fixes.
We also need to worry about the number of aircraft in our mobility
Air Force fleets as the C-141 retires much faster than the C-17 is
delivered. We need about 260 large T-tails to do our global work every
day. We must deal with training, maintenance, depots, tests, and most
important, all of our daily, world-wide operational missions: peace,
contingency and, God forbid, major theater wars. Our analysis and
experience show us that if we have fewer than 260 wide-bodied tails, we
lose the flexibility to do our jobs as well as the capacity to do them
on time. Time is critical when it comes to air mobility. We believe that
we need at least another squadron of C-17s over and above the currently
planned 120 in order to handle our special operation requirements, which
are similar to our major theater war requirements in many ways. That has
to be factored in sometime in the future.
We have great interest in improving the reliability of our 126 C-5s.
It is the right thing to do for our nation. The C-5 has roughly 80% of
its structural life remaining. That equates to another 30 to 40 years of
service, but it desperately needs new engines and upgraded avionics.
This will give the C-5 the reliability of today's KC-10 and it won't
impact our military construction budget or other critical accounts
because we have the trained C-5 crews, trained and experienced
maintainers, we have the parts, we have the bases, we have the big
hangers, we have the simulators -- all in the right places. We should
not miss this opportunity to turn the C-5 into the highly reliable work
horse we need to do our strategic work. We can't afford to walk away
from an aircraft that has 80% of its structural life, that delivers 36
pallets, 73 passengers -- a truly strategic craft with great flexibility
when it works.
Another major readiness challenge I'd like to discuss is the
long-range strategy for our C-130 fleet. We have to reengineer the
training base first to match our total force operational and training
requirements. We currently have over 500 combat-delivery C-130s,
composed of 5 different versions. We cannot inter-fly them. It is like
having 5 smaller fleets. They just look the same. When we get the
C-130J, there will be six and they also just look the same. The C-130J
is 70% different than its immediate predecessor. We have to get that
family down to two types. The older C-130s are 36 years old, and you can
well imagine the training, maintenance, and modernization challenges
involved in sustaining that fleet around the world. We've come up with a
long-range plan for a modified, standardized platform that we now call
the C-130X. We'd have X and J models. Upgrades would target the
electrical system, avionics, engines and, in some cases, structural
repairs phased out over about 12 years. When compared with the
alternative, the high operating costs of maintaining an aging fleet and
not staying abreast of the need to become compliant with evolving
communication and navigation requirements worldwide, this long-range
strategy will eventually pay for itself. The trick is how and when.
Staying ready also means keeping our most important players on the
mobility air force team. As much as we talk about having good equipment,
we're not worried about the C-130 putting in its papers and separating,
leaving our team. But we do have some serious retention problems. We
need to work retention issues hard for all: pilots, navigators, enlisted
air crew, enlisted overall. One of our biggest retention challenges is
managing the high optempo inherent in our mobility air force's mission.
It is the relentless thing that we do and it comes with the territory.
In the mobility air forces, we have an enormous monkey on our back in
optempo that we call aircrew turbulence: short-notice changes to the
flying and TDY schedules driven often by requirements, lots of them,
higher-priority requirements working on a smaller fleet. Turbulence
makes our scheduling job a nightmare and it takes a tremendous toll on
the personal lives of our people -- aircrews, maintenance, aerial port,
and TALCE (Tanker Airlift Control Element) personnel who are out there
today -- and above all else, on their families. We are fighting
turbulence and optempo in every way we know how. We are making steady
progress through extraordinary things we've created, including working
with the aircrews themselves to tell us what they really need.
As a response to the pilot retention problem, our increase bonus is
our main thrust. But we are pushing other ideas as well. Our Air Force
leadership has focused on fashioning an initiative that would be a
career-transition program, linking our mobility flying career with a
follow-on commercial aviation career for our retirement-eligible
personnel. We are very close on this one and we hope to see it soon.
Our enlisted air crew force also deserves better compensation, for
retention to be sure, but also for quality of life. We've pushed to
double their current hazardous duty incentive pay, but that is just an
initial step. We are pleased to see Congress is showing concern about
this issue and has asked the Department of Defense to conduct a thorough
review. OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) has leaned forward and
sponsored a review panel focused on this issue with a new career
enlisted flight incentive pay system under study that would look very
much like the officer system. This innovative program would be similar
to the aviation incentive pay program we have for our rated officers and
hopefully would yield more compensation for enlisted aircrew members.
These retention initiatives will help, but we recognize it is just
the beginning. It is a never-ending job. We must all continue to work
retention from every angle if we are to remain a first-class Air Force.
We at Air Mobility Command recognize that the 135,000 enlisted men and
women in the active, Guard and Reserve air mobility team are the heart
and soul of our readiness. So, we have designated fiscal year 1998 as
the Year of the Enlisted Force. Nothing, I repeat, nothing happens in
this Air Force without the dedication, the enthusiasm, and the sacrifice
of our enlisted men and women. Not an aircraft launches, not a pallet
gets loaded, not a bomb gets uploaded, not a message gets sent, not a
passenger gets processed, no one's family gets protected, not an ounce
of gas gets passed, not a patient is cared for without the world's best
enlisted force -- and we have them. Throughout the year, we are taking
initiatives and sharing ideas and improving the career and quality of
life of each and every enlisted member of our air mobility team.
Thus far, I've reviewed the four main readiness challenges ahead for
AMC: fixing the logistics system; maintaining adequate numbers of
reliable, strategic air mobility aircraft, including a more reliable
C-5; developing a long-range strategy for combat-delivering C-130s; and
turning the corner on our decreasing retention. These are difficult
challenges, but I know that we can meet them because we've seen some
great progress in other challenges in the past year.
Before I close, I want to review some of these success stories and
thank all of you who had a part in making them happen. First, there is a
program we have called Global Air Traffic Management, or GATM, a term
that didn't exist a year ago. World-wide increases in the volume of air
traffic have resulted in aircraft being required to have more
high-technology equipment on board as a prerequisite to flying in some
airspace. Last spring, we entered an era of restricted global reach.
Therefore, we had restricted global engagement for the first time, when
600 KC-135s and part of our SAM fleet were closed out at certain
altitudes crossing the Atlantic. More restrictions are on the way next
spring in the Pacific. We've had great support in working this issue,
support from the Chief, from the Chairman, the Secretary, the FAA and
Congress. We are now in partnership with the Joint Staff, OSD, FAA,
ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), and the
airline industry in shaping these GATM requirements around the globe so
others don't shape them for us. We want GATM to proceed at a logical
pace, protecting our global access for all of our aircraft. OSD, the Air
Staff and Congress have helped us tremendously by jump-starting this and
shifting $17 million in Fiscal Year 98 to GATM. That was after the
budget closed out. Due to great Air Force, JROC (Joint Requirements
Oversight Council) and OSD support, this financial effort will increase
significantly in FY99.
Global engagement would slow to a crawl without good, reliable ground
equipment -- materiel-handling equipment (we call it MHE) -- to load and
unload our aircraft, to shorten our ground times. Our MHE is getting
terribly old and unreliable, largely 10 hours meantime between failure
on the units. Fortunately, we've made some great recent progress on our
new 60K loader. The program is in full production and we've delivered
the first 60K loaders this summer to Ramstein and Dover operationally.
They are performing marvelously. We've also had a "name the
loader" contest and voted to call it the Tunner after General
William H. Tunner, who directed the Bermuda Hump, Korea and the Berlin
airlifts. To date, we have eight Tunners delivered. Our contractor is
accelerating the production and giving us four more this week to help
our on-going flows. To support our current deployment, we are
positioning them to the critical on-load and off-load stations to
exploit our incredible capabilities. Four of them are in Kuwait today.
Until we have a large number of these Tunners, eventually 250 or more,
we'll continue to shift them around based on the current situation. Then
we'll get the next generation small loader into our family of MHE as
well.
The Tunner is so much more reliable and versatile than its
predecessor that we are going to have to reconsider
the way we run not only our loading operations, but also how we
get the crews to the plane, even fleet service -- although the crew bus
and the coffee may truly be unalterable forces in some parallel
universe.
Lastly, I'd like to talk about the C-17. So far, 37 have been
delivered to Charleston and Altus. They are performing brilliantly.
We'll start equipping our first squadron at McChord in the summer of
1999. This last September, in an exercise with an arcane name --
CENTRAZBAT '97 -- we used our C-17s to demonstrate their amazing
contribution to global engagement. Eight C-17s flew non-stop from Pope
to Kazhakstan and dropped 540 paratroopers from the 82nd
Airborne and also from several East European countries (the Central
Asian Battalion). The 8000-mile flight took over 20 hours. Twenty
tankers offloaded 2,000,000 pounds of gas during three refuelings. The
C-17s dropped the jumpers, including a CINC (General Sheehan, former
CINC Atlantic Command), on target, on time to the second. This exercise
sent a clear message to our leaders and to the world: we have the
strategic capability to insert a coalition force well-rested, well-fed
and ready to do battle anywhere in the world with pinpoint precision.
CENTRAZBAT also demonstrated the point I want to leave you with
today. Global engagement is reality today due to the great working
relationship we have with all of our major air commands and all of our
men and women as well as our aviation industry, our test community, and
great partners like the U.S. Army and 82nd Airborne, who made
that happen as well. AMC is proud to be on this mobility air force's
team and on our Air Force team. I look forward to taking your questions.
Thank you.
Gen. Shaud: The first question is about the global
transportation network -- in support of the recent deployment, were you
pleased with the GTN performance?
Gen. Kross: This was a textbook performance by ACC.
I should also tell you it was the best in-transit visibility we have
ever had in any military operation. We have been continually improving
by focusing on the larger exercises -- Cobra Gold, Bright Star, those
kinds of things. We form teams. We keep them together. We put the data
in ourselves. We make sure the aircraft does not taxi until the data is
entered. During Bright Star last fall, our all-time
high in-transit visibility was 70%. In this real-world contingency,
in-transit visibility was 92%.
Gen. Shaud: Next question, also with regard to the
recent deployment. Over the years, the enroute structure for AMC has
been reduced. How do you compensate during a major deployment, such as
the recent move to Southwest Asia?
Gen. Kross: Three words: global reach laydown. We
only keep an infrastructure around the globe where we need it, where we
tend to go most of the time. But when we go to a contingency, we just
lay in global reach laydown packages. In the early 1990s, when we stood
up Air Mobility Command, we thinned out the overseas structure and
created units on the east and west coasts called air mobility ops
groups. They have in them command and control, maintenance, aerial port,
security police and other key functions. We put packages together called
TALCEs (Tanker Airlift Control Elements), and put them around the world.
Today we are operating at 11 pickup points in the United States with
TALCEs and 5 locations overseas within the Gulf region.
Gen. Shaud: Part of your responsibility is the
tanker force. This is a Guard and Reserve question. Are there any plans
to upgrade the KC-135Es and what is the update on reengining KC-135s?
Gen. Kross: As you know, most of the KC-135 fleet
has been reengined with the R model, the new R engine. When you want to
go far and fast, you want to go in a 135. Our Guard partners have about
100 aircraft that still have older engines on them, with 60s and 70s
technology. Consequently, they can't give their full punch to our
air-refueling fleet. We do have plans. General Paul Weaver and I are
looking at several innovative options to try to reequip our KC-135Es
with new engines. So all the five types will come down to one and we
will all have one single type of engine.
Gen. Shaud: Last question, AMC, like ACC, is moving
toward distributed mission training, specifically the C-5s at Dover and
Travis. What AMC missions do you see as the primary focus of DMT in
Mobility Command?
Gen. Kross: All of the above.
Return to the Orlando '98 Foundation Forum Page
