INTRODUCTION OF WITNESSES Senator STEVENS. General Allen, I am happy to see you here, sir, with General Burke, General Vogt, and General Parker. We would like to put your statements in the record and have you summarize them. All the statements will be printed in the record in full. I understand from the staff, General Burke, that you have a slide presentation. General BURKE. Yes, sir. Senator STEVENS. I will be happy to have that. We will have a day for hearing outside witnesses on this issue alone sometime before we report the bill to the floor. Would you please proceed as you wish, General. MOBILITY BALANCE WITHIN MILITARY FORCES General ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I welcome the opportunity to be with you today to discuss airlift requirements. I have provided a detailed statement for the record. In the interest of time I would like to highlight a few points from that statement which has been submitted. Within our military forces we need a mobility balance and that balance needs to be considered in two fashions. First, we need a balance between the air and land combat forces that have to be moved in the event of a contingency or emergency and the mobility forces that are available to move them. As I have pointed out on a number of occasions, the best trained 101st Airborne Division in the world, for example, is not going to be very effective in its role of deterrence or countering aggression if it is unable to fight outside the confines of Fort Campbell, Ky. And similarly, the best trained F-15 wing that one could imagine is not going to be very effective if it cannot fight outside its radius from Langley Air Force Base. We need a balance between our combat forces and the mobility forces which are required to deploy them. In a second context within our mobility forces we need an appropriate balance between airlift, sealift, prepositioning and intratheater transportation resources. The key factors in determining that balance are the issues of time and volume. Airlift, on the one hand, is responsive, it is flexible, but it is limited in volume. Sealift provides great volume, but is unable to get there in the critical early days. Prepositioning assists both timing and volume, but it reduces flexibility, and to some degree prepositioning also increases the requirements for airlift. The intratheater transportation, both air and ground, of course, is the mode which links together the other three, the airlift, the sealift, and the prepositioning and it cannot be ignored. MILITARY AIRLIFT COMMAND READINESS The Military Airlift Command deploys and supports the employment of nearly all fighting elements within the U.S. military structure. We provide airlift, aeromedical evacuation, rescue and recovery forces, global weather support, and audio-visual support. The readiness of the Military Airlift Command today is good. It is good as far as peacetime exercises and minor contingency requirements are concerned. Our command is composed of trained dedicated professionals who demonstrate their capability on a daily basis in exercise and in their normal business. We do, however, have deficiencies, significant shortfalls in the context of our ability to support a major contingency requirement. The precise nature of those shortfalls is scenario dependent. But in almost every scenario we have a significant shortfall in outsize capability. Secondly, we are constrained today by a lack of spare parts. PERSONNEL CONCERNS IN MAC Now, I have established within the Military Airlift Command several priorities to address these various deficiencies. Priority No. 1 is taking care of our people. I am happy to report to you that as a result of the support of the Congress last fall, which brought the pay scales up to relative comparability with the civilian sector, in combination with the state of the economy in the civilian sector, our retention rates today are very good and we have seen a substantial increase in retention rates in the last 6 or 7 months. Regrettably, it takes time for those improved retention rates to result in a significant additional quantity of trained specialists. Today, for example, we are running about 85 percent manning in the sergeant, staff sergeant and tech sergeant level, the people who actually maintain and fix broken airplanes. That 85 percent not only has to take care of fixing the broken airplanes and take care of the maintenance function, but they are also used to train the younger people. So they are providing double duty. We think it is extremely important that we maintain these good retention rates over a period of time so that they will result in increased levels of skilled manning. One of the foremost aspects of that, of course, will be to insure that we maintain comparability with the civilian sector in the pay scales, depending upon what the inflation rate might be. PCS ENTITLEMENTS Other actions which might be very useful include correcting some of the inequities in PCS, permanent change of station, entitlements. There is a great discrepancy between the military and civil service, for example, today. Dental CHAMPUS also would have a high priority among the people in the Military Airlift Command. My second priority is to try to realize the full potential of our existing assets that have been provided to us-the C-5's, the C141's, and the C-130's. Substantial moneys were approved by the Congress in 1981, in 1982 and are proposed for your approval in 1983 to correct the spare parts deficiencies which I mentioned earlier. The moneys which were provided for that purpose in fiscal year 1981 were allocated to the long-leadtime items. In the case of an engine compressor, for example, the leadtime today is about 46 months. So we have not yet realized the impact of those purchases stemming from the 1981 to 1982 budgets. We anticipate that we will be seeing in creased quantities and increased availability of spare parts starting in about 10 to 12 more months. C-141 STRETCH PROGRAM The C-141 stretch program has been a good program. It added 23 feet to the fuselage of the C-141 and also added a refueling capability. It has been a very good program and we will complete that modification program next month, and I am pleased to be able to report that it is coming through ahead of schedule and below projected cost. C-5 WING MODIFICATION The C-5 wing modification program is a very important program to us. It will add 30,000 flight hours to each C-5 in the fleet, an indispensable capability inasmuch as those C-5's are the only outsize airframes which we have in our force today. C-130 FLEET MODIFICATION We also are undertaking modifications on the C-130 fleet. That fleet is getting old. We are having problems with the outer wing boxes in some models and the center wing boxes in other models, due purely to age, and we have to fix them. After doing all those things, however, there is indeed a major shortfall remaining within our overall airlift capability, a shortfall which is in excess of 25 million ton-miles per day as measured against the requirements in the overseas theaters. Accordingly, a decision has been made to recommend the procurement of the 50 additional C-5's and 44 KC-10's, for which very favorable cost options exist. Those airplanes, once available and on the ramp, will add about 13 million ton-miles per day capability to the present airlift force, leaving a shortfall in excess of 12 million ton-miles per day. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ON C-17 For that reason we also further recommend continued research and development on the C-17 at a minimal level so that when we are past the peak funding years on the C-5, there will be an option to procure the C-17 to further augment the intertheater airlift capability, to provide an intratheater outsize airlift capability, which does not exist today, and as a potential replacement for the aging C-141's and C-130's after the turn of the century. And, it is not too early for us to start thinking about that. CIVIL RESERVE AIR FLEET (CRAF) Finally the CRAF, Civil Reserve Air Fleet, provides a very, very important element of our national airlift capability. We are very interested in enhancing and improving the Civil Reserve Air Fleet capability. As compared with owning the airplanes, it provides a very attractive option from an economic point of view also. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening comments. I would turn now to General Burke. [The prepared statements of General Allen and General Vogt follow:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF GEN. JAMES R. ALLEN COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF MILITARY AIRLIFT COMMAND Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I welcome the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss airlift requirements for the Military Airlift Command (MAC). It is self-evident that we cannot station forces around the world with strength sufficient to meet all potential challenges. What we can and must do is acquire the capability to project rapidly, to any point on the globe, well equipped and trained combat forces that are strong enough to discourage military adventurism. The existence of such a projection capability, by itself, could provide an important element of deterrence to military adventurism on the part of any potential foes. However, today we find ourselves in an imbalanced posture in which our mobility forces are inadequate to meet the rapid deployment needs of our existing combat forces. To correct this deficiency, we must work toward a coordinated and balanced solution that considers not only airlift, but also sealift, prepositioning, and ground transportation. Each of these elements plays an essential role in the mobility equation, but required delivery time and volume dictate the optimum mix between the various elements. Airlift has many advantages for the deployment of forces, but foremost are its flexibility and speed. Airlift permits an initial response force to be in place virtually anywhere in the world in a matter of hours rather than weeks. This timeliness can make the difference between establishing a defensive position with a relatively small force capable of holding back or slowing an aggressor; or later, after failing to have responded rapidly enough, having to mount a vastly larger force to regain lost ground. speed and flexibility of airlift can also insure a continuous flow of needed resupply during the first days of the conflict. The ability to project those forces early and to keep them resupplied is critically dependent upon the resources of MAC. The Today we have a respectable and significant airlift capability and are fully capable of accomplishing our peacetime tasks as well as responding to minor contingencies. We have proven this in the past by supporting both contingencies and exercises. Our shortfalls surface when we are tasked for a sizable deployment of forces to meet a major protracted contingency. This is clearly documented in the Congressionally Mandated Mobility Study (CMMS). Within the Military Airlift Command, I have established three basic priorities to deal with the overall deficiency of airlift. The number one priority has to be our people; second, we must realize the full potential of those resources we have assigned; and third, we need to procure new aircraft to meet the remaining requirements. My primary concern continues to be the retention of experienced, quality people. Where necessary, we can adjust to shortfalls of equipment, but we cannot operate when there is a lack of dedicated and highly trained people. During recent travels, I have noticed a significant change for the better in the attitude of our people, and this is being reflected in higher retention rates. Much of the credit is due to recent gains in pay and benefits, and our |