Highlighting the effectiveness of the airlifter, John Sams, Boeing’s vice president for Air Force programs, told reporters Monday at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in Washington that the C-17 fleet achieved an 85 percent mission capable rate in 2006—the highest rate for manned USAF aircraft. Worldwide, the C-17 has a departure reliability average around 93 percent over six years and maintenance man hours per flight hour have decreased 66 percent since 1994. The MC rate is even more impressive in light of the fact that 92 percent is as high as they can go, Sams said, since at any given time one or two aircraft will be in “home station” for regular organic maintenance and is not available for mission tasking.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…