Taking shots at the Pentagon’s 2006 Mobility Capability Study was the name of the game at a March 7 House Armed Services hearing on Air and Land Forces. Ranking member James Saxton (R-N.J.) asserted that the MCS, begun in 2004, was designed to take a “hard look” at airlift needs in the post 9/11 world, but it “didn’t say much.” Saxton continued: “There were no hard questions asked by the MCS, and there were certainly no answers in the MCS.” Now, he said, we await the “five more studies” called for in the Quadrennial Defense Review. William Solis, with the Government Accountability Office, pitched in, reminding panel members that GAO found the central MCS conclusion that a strategic mobility fleet of 180 C-17s and 112 C-5s would be adequate through 2013 was “based on incomplete data [and] inadequate modeling and metrics … [and its] results were incomplete, unclear, or contingent upon further study.” Everyone now is waiting for the other studies—due dates unknown—to hopefully shed some rational light on the subject.
For an investment of less than $24 million, the Air Force was able to return a damaged B-2 bomber to flying status in November. The service offered an unusually detailed description of the methods used to fix the stealth aircraft.
