Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley said Thursday afternoon at AFA’s Orlando symposium that there “undoubtedly” will be a Nunn-McCurdy breach on the C-5 Avionics Modernization Program and Reliability and Re-engining Program. Once that happens, the whole C-5 AMP and RERP effort must be re-assessed, and Moseley said it might not be worth it to do the mod on the older C-5A. That model, even with the improvements, will only get up to about a 60 percent mission capable rate, he said, and will only be available for another 25 years. “Five billion is a lot to spend on a 25-year airplane,” Moseley said. Wynne added, “We think there’s a better use for the resources,” such as tankers, more C-17s, more C-130Js or the yet-undefined Joint Cargo Aircraft.
Today’s armament maintainers are tasked with performing flightline (O-Level) maintenance with an assortment of legacy test sets that greatly limit the ability to quickly and efficiently verify armament system readiness, diagnose failures, and ultimately return the aircraft to full mission...