The chief of U.S. military transportation will ask the Pentagon to reevaluate
its requirements for aircraft, ships and land vehicles needed to move forces
and supplies to multiple conflicts around the world.
The transportation system could not handle two simultaneous conflicts, in addition
to a host of smaller operations where U.S. forces now are deployed, such as
Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, said Air Force Gen. John W. Handy, head of the
U.S. Transportation Command.
“As you continue all the other missions, [the transportation problem]
is of great concern,” said Handy. “What if something where to happen
in North Korea, of a crisis nature, we would have to swing a great number of
the forces we have extended towards Southwest Asia to support any movement toward
the Pacific.” With the assets available today, he said, “You can’t
do both simultaneously.”
A report completed more than two years ago—called Mobility Requirements
Study 2005—concluded that the United States needs to be able to move the
equivalent of 54.5 million ton-miles per day to meet the Bush administration’s
national security strategy, outlined in the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review.
The war on terrorism that started in September 2001 made the results of the
MRS 2005 obsolete. That is why the Defense Department should set a more realistic
requirement, likely to be much higher than 54.5 million ton-miles per day, said
Handy.
The MRS 2005 study essentially was overtaken by events, Handy told National
Defense. It predates the September 11 attacks, the creation of the Northern
Command, and a “good number of decisions the nation has made since 9/11.”
Million ton-miles a day is a standard metric used to gauge the capability to
push cargo. The 54.5 figure, Handy said, “is exactly the wrong number.
We don’t know yet what the right number is. It is going to be larger.”
Meanwhile, said Handy, “We have asked for a new study and are waiting
for the endorsement of the Defense Department.”
Handy said that TRANSCOM never has been able to meet the 54.5 million ton miles
a day, so mobility shortfalls will deepen after the requirement is revised upwards.
“We will keep doing what we do now,” he said. “Strain the
system and stretch out our delivery timelines.” The requirement set in
the MRS 2005 study could be met if TRANSCOM had a fleet of 222 C-17 Globemaster
and 52 refurbished C-5 Galaxy heavy-lift airplanes, said Handy. The current
fleet has 89 C-17s, 118 outdated C-5s and 69 cold-war era C-141s, which eventually
will be replaced by C-17s.
The Transportation Command altogether owns 1,365 aircraft, 131 ships, 2,216
railcars, 82 tractors and 112 trailers. It’s annual operating budget is
$4.6 billion.
On any given day, the command oversees 350 air missions, 50 ships en route
and 10,000 ground shipments.
The pace picked up significantly in February, during the buildup in preparation
for war with Iraq. As of mid-March, there were 125 ships supporting the U.S.
Central Command. About 75 of the 125 ships were at sea. At the time, 38 of those
75 vessels were awaiting a decision by the Turkish government to allow U.S.
cargo to be offloaded in Turkey.
The Transportation Command also leased 47 commercial passenger aircraft to
move troops to the Middle East. Another 31 commercial cargo aircraft were sitting
in reserve, in case they were needed. TRANSCOM officials boast that military
door-to-door service for Central Command beats commercial service by seven days,
even though the overall “customer wait time” for transatlantic shipments
to Central Command increased by 14 days since the buildup started.
Between late January and early February, TRANSCOM delivered within 30 days
the same amount of supplies that took six months to get to the Persian Gulf
for Operation Desert Storm, said Handy. He attributed the higher efficiency
to the availability of better military cargo airplanes, specifically the C-17,
and to the acquisition of 19 more container ships known as “large medium-speed
roll-on roll-off.” TRANSCOM activated 36 LMSR ships for a possible conflict
with Iraq.
“Purposeful investments made after Desert Storm allowed us to do this
thing without so much of the agony,” said Handy. Nevertheless, he said,
“We still are well short in our airlift and air refueling capability.”
Airlift shortages, further, are compounded by a scarcity of refueling airplanes,
Handy said. The workhorse tanker fleet, the KC-135, averages more than 40 years
of age. “We are trying to retire older aircraft. That creates more of
a bathtub in the tanker capability,” he said. The plan is to mothball
130 KC-135Es, 68 of which are slated to end service during the next five years.
Handy is a fervent supporter of an Air Force proposal to lease 100 Boeing 767
tankers, a plan that has not yet been approved by Congress and has been criticized
for its steep price tag. (Estimates range from $150 million to $200 million
per airplane.)
The United States needs a 600-tanker fleet, Handy said. The Air Force now operates
546 KC-135s and 59 KC-10s. The Navy and Marine Corps also operate their own
tankers, but their fleets are relatively small.
Cost of Airlift
Decisions on whether supplies are shipped overseas by sea or air are negotiated
with the combatant commander, Handy explained. He noted that even though ships
travel much slower than airplanes, they offer other advantages and their services
cost measurably less.
One LMSR container ship, for example, can carry the equivalent of 302 C-17
loads. The average LMSR cargo can be unloaded in two to three days, a relatively
fast turnaround. “I could not close 300 C-17 sorties in two to three days,”
said Handy. Most major seaports can accommodate from two to four LMSR ships
in a single day. Smaller ports can take one or two vessels a day.
“Sealift is very efficient,” said Handy. More importantly, it “saves
the air capability for surgical, high-priority, must-do-on-short-notice things,”
such as Operation Enduring Freedom, in land-locked Afghanistan, where everything
has to be shipped by air.
The cost of air transportation can be astronomical, when compared with sea
shipping. During Operation Enduring Freedom, TRANSCOM delivered 2.4 million
meals (called humanitarian daily rations). It cost $17.6 million to deliver
the rations by air. By sea and surface transportation, the price would have
dropped to $364,000. Shipping one million pounds of wheat costs $2.9 million
by air and $60,000 by sea. The shipment of 16,643 JDAM satellite-guided bomb
kits costs about $235 million by air and $10.7 million by sea.
With growing numbers of forces deployed around the world, the United States
must do more to improve the efficiency of transportation and re-supply efforts,
Handy said.
Not only does the Defense Department deploy forces, but “we must sustain
these troops at the same time,” he said. The “sustainment”
consumes a large share of the airlift assets, he added.
The distribution of supplies is the responsibility of the Defense Logistics
Agency, which manages $80 billion worth of inventory. Discussions now are under
way to consider whether DLA should be merged with the U.S. Transportation Command.
That would make sense from a logistics perspective, said Handy, because it would
help close “seams between deployment, sustainment, transportation and
distribution.” The current process, he explained, is fragmented and is
prone to bottlenecks, due to a lack of synchronization and the use of non-interoperable
computer systems.
Operating under separate chains of command, DLA and TRANSCOM often cannot coordinate
the distribution and shipment of supplies as well as it could be done, if they
were both integrated under a single combatant commander, said Handy. A merger
of the two organizations, he said, would be a “dramatic statement about
defense transformation that would certainly move us into the next century and
show that logistics support of the war fighter is doable.”
The assimilation of DLA and TRANSCOM now is the focus of a study by the deputy
undersecretary of defense for logistics, Diane K. Morales.
“Every logistician I talk to across the service and Joint Staff favors
getting the business of distribution (supply and transportation) under one combatant
commander,” said Handy. “It’s the right thing to do for the
war fighter.”
DLA is a Defense Department agency run by a three-star officer. It employs
23,000 people and operates 24 distribution centers worldwide. By comparison,
the Transportation Command’s workforce is 151,000 strong, of whom 84,617
are reservists.