Battlefield airlifter a USAF niche but a RAAF need?

“It’s not because it isn’t a good aircraft and it’s not because it wasn’t a good idea $487 billion ago,” LTGEN Miller said. “We are going to make more disciplined use of defence dollars.”

The key argument for the cancellation of the Joint Cargo Aircraft program was that the C-27J, built by Alenia Aermacchi and support in the US by L-3 Communications, had higher life-cycle costs than the C-130 due to how it was to be based, and that it was required for a role that could be fulfilled by the USAF’s C-130 Hercules fleet.

“[Cutting the C-27 program] was a decision we did not like to make but that we had to make,” LTGEN Miller said. “Its capacity, over and above the rest of the fleet, simply was not needed under the demands of the new strategy. What that allowed us to do was keep some very important things on track.”

The savings would allow the USAF to focus on systems like the F-35 joint strike fighter and other, less visible systems like global positioning satellites, space programs and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems.

“We want to make decisions in the near term that support the strategic vision in the long term,” he said. “As we start to come out of Afghanistan, and have come out of Iraq, we are facing a new resource era.”

But in its recent analysis paper on the RAAF’s Battlefield Airlifter (BFA) program, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute argued that unlike the United States, Australia does have a need for a smaller transport than the C-130, both for current operational deployments and domestic use in cases of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

The paper stated: “ASPI has often been an advocate of type rationalisation for reasons of economy

of scale. But in this instance what is ‘niche’ to the USAF is more important for the RAAF. The US has created a number of large airfields in Afghanistan which are suitable for strategic airlifters and there are many medium and heavy-lift helicopters in theatre that are suitable for delivery to forward operating areas.

“Neither of those considerations apply in the ADF’s primary operating environment — it contains numerous small airfields that are widely separated, making the USAF model difficult, if not impossible to implement. A BFA makes sense in that context.”

Only 13 C-27J Spartans had been delivered to the Air National Guard, a small fraction of a USAF/Air National Guard transport fleet, which includes over 200 C-17s, 100 C-5s and 400 C-130s.

But Australia operates just 12 C-130Js, eight flyable C-130Hs and five, soon-to-be six, C-17s. So comparatively, the 10 BFA aircraft, which will replace the ageing C-130Hs in service, would comprise a significant portion of the RAAF’s future airlift fleet.

The paper goes on to compare the relative merits of the C-27J and Airbus Military C295 platforms for the BFA role, a comparison ASPI said would come down to not only a judgment about each platform’s advantages but also the weighting placed on requirements, so that a preferred option could be selected.

“Either aircraft would give the ADF an increased capacity to move troops and stores to short or rough airfields, as per its hub and spoke approach. The C-295 is cheaper per unit to acquire and is likely to be cheaper to run per flying hour,” the paper pointed out.

“However, it won’t be able to carry the ADF’s new light vehicles and its cabin size limitations will impose more restrictions on the transfer of stores from the larger C-130 and C-17 aircraft than its competitor.

“The C-27J is more expensive per unit to acquire and has a higher hourly running cost but has a larger fuselage with the ability to easily fit some of the larger items the ADF will want to move intra-theatre, and is more compatible with pallets from the larger airlifters.

“The final decision will likely come down to the premium that is acceptable for that flexibility and the degree to which some tasks can be regarded as ‘nice to have’ rather than essential. If the price difference is small, then the C-27J has the inside running.

“But if the difference is substantial, a case can be made to trade versatility for economy with the difference being reinvested elsewhere in the ADF’s force structure for greater overall utility.”

The ASPI paper comes at the same time Alenia Aermacchi and L-3 Communications again have restated their commitment to providing through-life support to the C-27J if it is bought under the US Foreign Military Sales program, should it be selected for the BFA requirement.