National Defense > Blog > Posts > Afghanistan’s Nascent Air Force Feeling the Pain of the U.S. Acquisition Process

7/20/2010

Afghanistan’s Nascent Air Force Feeling the Pain of the U.S. Acquisition Process
The members of the budding Afghan air force are become westernized in more ways than they ever imagined. They are learning from the U.S. Air Force how to speak fluent English, how to fly and maintain modern aircraft, and how to function like a professional organization.

They also are getting a crash course in American-style weapons acquisition. The lesson: The U.S. military may be on a tight schedule to build up the Afghan air force, but there is no way to avoid the delays, snags and crazy red tape associated with acquiring new aircraft.

“The acquisition processes and system as you know are very laborious, very disciplined,” said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Boera, commander of the Combined Air Power Transition Force in Afghanistan. He is responsible for recruiting, training and equipping the Afghan air force.

The flagship piece of new hardware that U.S. and NATO forces are acquiring for the Afghans is Alenia’s C-27 cargo aircraft. The goal is to buy 20 aircraft so the Afghans can take over airlift and VIP transport duties. A force of 3,400 Afghan airmen currently operates 50 aircraft, including fixed wing and rotorcraft. A total of 146 aircraft are expected to be acquired for an Afghan air force projected to grow to 8,000 members by 2016.

When then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld first sent the U.S. Air Force to Afghanistan in 2005 to train the Afghans, the initial batch of aircraft was donated, and mostly were antiquated Soviet-era platforms. Different countries donated Mi-17 and Mi-35 helicopters, and An-32s fixed-wing turboprop transports.

By October 2008, the inventory included 21 rotary-wing and 10 fixed-wing aircraft, which consisted of 18 Mi–17s, three Mi–35s, six An–32s, two An–26s and two L–39 Czech jet trainers.

The C-27 is the “first modern western aircraft introduced into their system for decades,” Boera told reporters during a recent DoD bloggers roundtable. The Afghans current have six Russian Antonov An-32s, which will be replaced with 20 C-27s. The aircraft are being remanufactured from old airframes at Alenia’s factory in Italy, and include many U.S. built components, Boera said.  

The acquisition “lead times,” technical difficulties of upgrading older airframes with modern technology and high cost of the aircraft have compounded the already onerous task of building a force from the ground up, Boera said.

“Aircraft are expensive, plain and simple,” he said. He did not specify the cost of the remanufactured C-27s that NATO is acquiring for the Afghans. Brand-new aircraft have been estimated to cost around $60 million each.

From an annual budget of $10 billion to $11 billion that is slated for the recruiting and training of Afghan security forces, about $500 million to $800 million has been allocated for the buildup of the Afghan air force. That budget covers not just new aircraft but also the language and technical training being led by 450 U.S. Air Force officers and senior enlisted personnel. The U.S. Air Force trainer corps will grow by about 200 during the next several years.

Once Boera’s office files a “memorandum of requirements” for the needed equipment it takes anywhere from a year to two for the requests to get through the acquisition system.    

After years of flying Soviet hardware, the Afghans are “making a transition to more Western airframes,” Boera said

Of the 146 aircraft expected to be in the force by 2016, 90 will be Western-type airframes, he said. In addition to the C-27s, there will be Western rotary-wing trainers, fixed-wing trainers and fixed-wing close-air-support aircraft.  

The use of Western aircraft is viewed as critical to securing a long-lasting alliance between NATO and Afghan forces, Boera said. Part of the price that has to be paid for more advanced aircraft is coping with the complex acquisition system that Afghans have never experienced, he said. “With that transition to Western airframes comes a transition to the Western acquisition processes that involve a lot of checks and balances,” Boera said. “That's what we live with.”

Boera called the C-27 the “right aircraft for Afghanistan. It's simple enough that the Afghans can make a transition to it. It's rugged enough to handle flying in Afghanistan,” he said. “It brings a capability that the Antonov aircraft don't have, like roll-on, roll-off palletized cargo capability.”

They will be equipped with medical kits so they can fly medevac missions, and will have paratroop drop and tactical assault gear.  

“When we get the GPS Garmin wired in to the avionics -- the instrument avionics -- it will have the all-weather instrument approach capability that the Antonovs just do not have,” Boera said.

The downside is that they are 20-year-old airframes that are being refurbished. Alenia received a contract from NATO to rebuild the aircraft. “I think they've run into a little bit more challenges than they thought they were going to run into,” Boera said. “And so we've been putting some pressure on them to keep after it.” One of the major concerns is the corrosion in the older C-27s, he said. Another significant problem is the unavailability of parts, many of which are no longer in stock.    

“So many times, the company has to go out and they'll have to  have these parts manufactured,” said Boera. “So that takes time. … And then they have to be manufactured to the aircraft standards and air worthiness standards. … It's a little bit more of a challenge than I thought.”

The bright spot so far in the Afghan training program has been language learning, Boera said. The schooling and technical training take two to five years, depending on the specific competency.

“Probably the single greatest thing we have done for the advancement of English-language skills, motivation and building a professional air force for tomorrow has been the standup of an aviation English-immersion lab,” Boera said. “We call it Thunder Lab.”

Speaking the same language as the locals also can do wonders, noted Forrest L. Marion, a scholar who wrote an extensive article about the history of the Afghan Air Corps in the Summer 2010 issue of “Air Power History.”

Boera’s predecessor, U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Walter Givhan, spoke Dari even before arriving in Afghanistan, which gave him “instant credibility” with every Afghan he met, regardless of status, said Marion.

Givhan compared the Afghan air power mission to the one the U.S. Air Force carried out in Southeast Asia 40 years ago, training South Vietnamese and Cambodian airmen.

In Afghanistan, Givhan said in an interview with Marion, “It’s been left to us to figure out how to do this.” The forbidding terrain of Afghanistan, the threat from roadside bombs, and the nearly total lack of rail transportation make air power essential, Givhan said. “This country begs for air power,” he said.

Givhan sent U.S. Air Force pilots to the Ukraine to learn how to fly An-32 transports so they could become instructor pilots for the Afghans.
Posted at 4:22 PM by Sandra Erwin | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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