The Air Force “intends to retain” 89 of the 111 C-5 transports currently in the fleet, along with 223 C-17s, for strategic airlift, service officials tell the Daily Report. This means retiring five additional C-5A aircraft at some near-term point on top of the 17 C-5As that the Air Force leadership already indicated it intends to phase out in Fiscal 2011 should Congress lift the standing ban on reducing the C-5 inventory. The desire to trim the C-5 fleet by 22 tails is based on the findings of MCRS-16, the Pentagon’s newest mobility study, and on analysis done when the C-5 RERP initiative was restructured back in 2008, said these officials. Both works support the view that “sufficient capability exists” with 223 C-17s and 89 C-5s, they said. Already, USAF has trimmed the number of C-5As slated to get new avionics (see below).
The U.S. homeland is vulnerable to air and missile attack across the Arctic because the network of ground, air, and space-based defenses guarding those approaches have atrophied over time, according to a new paper from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
