Have you watched the sky in Long Beach and every now and then are amazed to see a huge lumbering but graceful airplane either taking off or coming in for a landing that doesn’t look like it should be there? The only military airlift aircraft still in production in the entire State of California has its genesis right here in our own city. The best, most versatile and technologically advanced aircraft in the world is built proudly by the hands of the people in and around our City of Long Beach. It’s the C-17 and unfortunately it may soon be making its final curtain call.
The production and use of this aircraft has become so vital that many of them have logged over a million air miles. From its role in the humanitarian effort to rush emergency supplies to the stranded residents of New Orleans and other outlying areas and hurricane affected cities and states to its unprecedented role in the war effort overseas, the C-17 has asserted its magnificent strength and capabilities beyond the role it was originally designed to play when it first emerged on the drafting tables of the Air Force and Boeing engineering laboratories.
So why would anyone knowing that this airplane has done more to elevate America’s prestige here and abroad even think of wanting to call it a day? Why would our government contemplate shutting down the production lines after not even achieving the minimum compliment of aircraft originally designated to complete the number needed to supply all our defensive air wings and squadrons?
We have all watched the commercial production lines at Boeing in Long Beach gradually shut down along with the last 717 coming off the line, and the loss of high paying aerospace employment. For our city, the majority of new jobs have focused more in the service sector. Maybe more people are working but not at the pay scales that a city such as ours ought to be delivering. The C-17 production line, on the other hand, consists of hundreds of millions of dollars allocated toward the assembly of this magnificent aircraft. These dollars help bolster our local economy and provide for high paying skilled personnel working in concert with the hundreds of subcontractors that provide their fair share of high tech parts manufactured locally and out of state all coming together in Long Beach and acting like a finely tuned orchestra.
Time and again when the C-17 project is openly discussed in Congress, testimony always points to a dangerous, changing world since the early 1990s when the aircraft was originally designed and funded to manufacture a total of 210. Every defense strategist points to the need for more of these flying fortresses to work at home, like the Katrina airlift effort, and to defend America’s interests elsewhere. Yet it appears at least for now that Congress continues allocating small increments of funding in comparison to our total federal defense budget to keep the assembly line barely open, looking to 2009 as the year for the last plane to be produced. Ironically many other countries have contemplated ordering some of these aircraft; how unfortunate for the United States—as the defender of the world’s freedom and democracy—that the best airlift aircraft ever designed and manufactured by Americans is having its destiny left in the hands of America’s allies.