WASHINGTON, DC –– U.S. Senator Kit Bond today fought against efforts in the Senate to balance the budget on the back of our warfighters.  Speaking on the Senate floor, Bond urged his colleagues to protect our warfighters’ airlift capability against a provision that would eliminate the C-17 line, our nation’s only large airlift line in production.

 

“There is no doubt that in the Defense budget you may find expensive, over-budget, and behind schedule programs, but the C-17 aircraft is not one of them,” said Bond.  “Which is why it is so bewildering – and disappointing – that some of this Chamber’s well known budget hawks are opposed to this model procurement program and a boon for taxpayers.”

 

Currently, the Senate is considering the fiscal year 2010 Defense Appropriations bill.  As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senators Bond and Feinstein, with the support of others, successfully fought to include $2.5 billion for 10 additional C-17 cargo aircraft in the committee-passed bill earlier this month.  Unfortunately, some in the Senate are ignoring the importance of the C-17 to our warfighters and national security and are fighting to strip these hard-won funds from the bill.  Earlier this year, Senators Bond, Feinstein, Boxer and others were able to secure $2.2 billion for the C-17 in the Defense supplemental bill that allowed the C-17 line to stay open. 

 

“Some of my colleagues have called the C-17 a “special interest” item – I agree – investing in the C-17 is in the special interest of our warfighters and is critical to our national security interests,” said Bond.  “We cannot allow this short-sighted attempt to eviscerate our warfighters' airlift capability and our nation's industrial base.”

 

Speaking on the floor, Senator Bond stressed that preserving the C-17 funding in the defense spending bill is our national security interests.  The C-17 is the only aircraft capable of performing all our airlift missions.  With the war in Afghanistan heating up and the war in Iraq continuing, our military’s airlift needs are only growing.  The Senator pointed out that the C-17 is a proven, combat-tested aircraft our warfighters need to meet the challenges of these two wars and increasing humanitarian missions.

 

Despite our military’s growing airlift need, our warfighters are being forced to rely on old aircraft.  The Congressional Research Service has indicated that the C-17 was designed to fly 1,000 hours per year over 30 years, but as our overseas commitments have grown, some aircraft have even reached 2,400 flying hours in a single year.  This heavy usage, in addition to the growth of the Army and Marine Corps, the logistics difficulty of getting supplies into Afghanistan, and  the need for increased humanitarian-smart power missions, are all reasons why the Senate must support the addition of 10 C-17s, emphasized Bond.

 

Bond also countered arguments that the military has enough C-17s and C-5s.  He pointed out that the old C-5A, with a 50 percent readiness level, a per hour operating cost of $29,000 and 40 maintenance-man hours per one hour of flight, is unreliable and costly to operate.  In addition to being the wrong aircraft for the job, the C-5A is a bad deal for the taxpayers.  The General Accountability Office found that it would take seven C-5As at $924 million cost to rehabilitate and refurbish to equal the capability of just one new C-17.  Instead of relying on these obsolete, ineffective and costly C-5As, the military needs to replace the aircraft with new C-17s.  The Senator noted that Congress granted the Department of Defense the ability to retire the old C-5A.  Before the fiscal year 2009 supplemental bill, there was a special interest legislative prohibition on retiring the old planes.

 

In addition to being bad for warfighters and taxpayers, Bond pointed out that ending C-17 production risks our domestic industrial base capacity.  The C-17 is America’s only large airlift line in production.  If we lose the engineers, designers, and skilled workers, we could be forced to turn to Russia or Europe for our large airlift needs.  Eviscerating our domestic industrial base would also risk 30,000 American jobs stretched across 43 states. 

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