Defense Secretary Robert Gates officially outlined the fiscal direction his department will take in the new federal budget, and it is a direction that does not include the Long Beach-built Boeing C-17 Globemaster III transport plane.
In his $534 billion defense budget proposal announced Monday, Gates recommended ending production of the giant military transport plane this fiscal year, a blow to C-17 advocates that had just months ago wrapped up a $2.95 billion contract extension to the program through August of next year. Gates’ decision, if approved by Congress, would potentially finalize the demise of the Long Beach Boeing plant, the last major airplane manufacturing line in Southern California. The Long Beach Boeing facility, which employed more than 10,000 people just a decade ago, now has about half that number on the payroll turning out about a dozen of the $200 million-a-piece C-17s each year.
Gates, who also took aim to cut or drastically reduce such high profile defense programs as the F-22 Raptor, the F/A-18, and the robot-laden Future Combat Systems program, said “we must rebalance this department’s programs in order to institutionalize and enhance our capabilities to fight the wars we are in today and the scenarios we are most likely to face in the years ahead, while at the same time providing a hedge against other risks and contingencies.”
To do this, Gates said that the Department of Defense requires a “fundamental overhaul of our approach to procurement, acquisition, and contracting.”
While outlining more than two dozen major funding shifts, Gates said that “with regard to air lift, we will complete production of the C-17 airlifter program this fiscal year. Our analysis concludes that we have enough C-17s with the 205 already in the force and currently in production.”
Designed in the mid-1970s as a replacement for the aging C-130 and C-141 airlifters, the C-17 has had a tumultuous history but one tied from its beginning to Long Beach. The cargo plane’s first production contract for 210 planes was signed in 1985 with McDonnell Douglas, but development problems and massive overruns led to the order being nearly halved by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1990. Additional orders in 1996, 1998, 2002 and 2006 brought the total production to 190 planes. The most recent contract was signed last year for another 15 planes, with production set to end in August 2010 at 205 planes—unless further foreign orders materialize.
Gates’ new fiscal priorities also come as a blow to Rep. Dana Rorabacher, R-Long Beach, who earlier this month posted a $4.2 billion earmark request for the C-17 program.
Missouri Republican Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, who represents the St. Louis area where some C-17 components are made, said Monday he thought the decision on the cargo plane was premature and should wait until the findings of a upcoming study into the transport needs of the military is complete. Despite Bond’s argument, Congress has repeatedly shown little confidence in previous air transport studies conducted by the Pentagon to justify the C-17.
The bottom line, according to defense aviation experts, is that Congress hold the ultimate budgetary authority and in the past has often saved programs headed for the chopping block, including the C-17.
In concluding his announcement, Gates took a swing at the practice of Congressional favoritism for defense programs that simply exist to create jobs in constituent areas.
“This budget presents an opportunity – one of those rare chances to match virtue to necessity,” said Gates. “To critically and ruthlessly separate appetites from real requirements – those things that are desirable in a perfect world from those things that are truly needed in light of the threats America faces and the missions we are likely to undertake in the years ahead.”
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