Gates: Splitting Tanker Would Add $14 Billion More
By JOHN T. BENNETT
Published: 14 Apr 2009 20:24
ABOVE SOUTHWEST GEORGIA AND FORT RUCKER, Ala. - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has had no direct conversations with lawmakers about the raft of major program decisions he unveiled last week. He also threw a new wrinkle into the Air Force's KC-X tanker program, saying buying both competitors' planes would drive up program costs by as much as $14 billion.
Gates last week announced about 50 decisions on major acquisition programs that will be included in the Obama administration's 2010 defense budget plan. That announcement was answered by criticism from both sides of the aisle from lawmakers concerned that his decisions could impact their districts and states.
Among other moves, his 2010 plan ends F-22 production, and increases and accelerates F-35 production. Gates several times last week urged lawmakers to "rise above parochial interests."
Gates said he has been "pleasantly surprised" by the reaction from Capitol Hill since his program announcement. What defense officials have heard from lawmakers, he said, is "a number of responses" that he labeled "thoughtful."
The secretary quipped that he wonders "if I am in the eye of the storm" because Congress is still in recess for Easter.
He spoke to a group of reporters on April 14 traveling with him to Fort Rucker, Ala., where he toured facilities and spoke with helicopter pilots. Gates will give remarks on April 15 at another Alabama military base, Maxwell Air Force Base.
The two-day swing is an opportunity, according to defense officials, for Gates to explain some of the decisions that shaped the Pentagon's 2010 spending plan, due to Congress next month.
He is visiting those two Alabama bases, he said, because "those are places where our future generals and admirals are doing their schooling."
During a press briefing the same day moments before leaving Fort Rucker, Gates reiterated his opposition to splitting a 179-plane, $35 billion Air Force contract for new aerial refueling tankers between Boeing and a rival team composed of Northrop Grumman and EADS.
The secretary said splitting the contract would increase tanker development costs by $7 billion to $14 billion. Gates told reporters "we do not need" the two costly maintenance, logistical and training systems that buying planes from each team would make necessary.
Some prominent lawmakers, such as Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, have signaled they may insert language - and additional monies - into fiscal 2010 defense funding legislation to split the buy. Murtha and other lawmakers feel such a move is the lone way out the scandal- and protest-ridden KC-X competition, which has been started and stopped several times this decade.
He also reinforced his plans to re-start the program this summer and possibly award a single contract early next year. While some lawmakers and defense analysts say a single-source award will inevitably lead the losing side to again delay getting new flying gas stations on the ramp, Gates said so long as the Air Force runs a "clean competition," he is confident the program can finally be completed.
The secretary told reporters aboard his plane en route to Fort Rucker that the 2010 defense budget will "put some money" into several new ISR systems, including ones designed to give warfighters full-motion video and information exploitation tools.
Gates said he plans to tell the troops during the two-day swing that, as future leaders, he wants them to think differently - including about the kinds of systems their services should buy in the future.
"I want them to think anew," Gates told reporters. Specifically, he said future military leaders should pursue weapon systems that give the military "capabilities with the maximum possible flexibility … for the widest range of conflicts."
His visit to Fort Rucker featured ample focus on his plans to increase Army helicopter accounts by $500 million in 2010. Those funds would go toward training more flight and maintenance crews that are needed to get more rotorcraft in the air in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Defense officials have said since Gates rolled out his 2010 plan that unmet helicopter requirements in those theaters are not because of a lack of airframes, but because the Army lacks sufficient personnel to keep the current inventory of helicopters flying.
Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of Training and Doctrine Command, which includes Fort Rucker, told reporters here that the command currently trains about 1,200 new helicopter pilots each year. The current demand is for about 1,500 annually.
Dempsey said the $500 million should help close the 300-pilot gap. The four-star said he expects to bring the level of newly trained pilots in line with the yearly operational requirement in about two years.
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