The Air Force is on the verge of signing on to the Army’s concept for a new inter-service cargo aircraft capable of vertical take-offs from aircraft carriers and difficult terrain, an Army official recently said.
“I know that there’s been a lot of talk that the Air Force is not interested in this,” said Bruce Tenney, the associate director for technology at the Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate. “That attitude is changing.”
The Joint Future Theater Lift (JFTL) program was born a year ago when Army and Air Force chiefs agreed to combine their respective development programs for a new intratheater cargo plane, after it had become clear that development costs alone for such a system could exceed $2.5 billion. JFTL is expected to replace the Air Force’s C-130 and to become the primary cargo hauler for the Army’s Future Combat Systems vehicles.
The Army had been focusing its efforts on a vertical take-off/landing aircraft, dubbed Joint Heavy Left (JHL), while the Air Force was wedded to the idea of a fixed-wing, short-takeoff/landing approach.
The services are putting the finishing touches on an initial capabilities document (ICD) that combines their requirements for the plane. Tenney said “all outstanding issues” between the services have been resolved, and officials are ready to sign on to a common solution.
One of the major drivers in leading the Air Force to accept the Army’s vision for a vertical take-off aircraft, according to Tenney, is the need for sea-basing, which “drives you to a vertical solution.” Tenney was speaking at the Institute for Land Warfare’s annual aviation conference on Jan. 9.
“I haven’t run into too many people that think we’re going to land a 250,000-pound fixed-wing aircraft on any of the ships that we’ve got,” he said.
“There have been barriers, principally from the Air Force, in agreeing to that as a requirement,” he added. “I think we’re past that now.”
Tenney said the sea-basing requirement will be included in the ICD, which he said is expected to be released one more time to the Army next week for “review and comment” before it goes to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council.
“The problem we’ve had getting the ICD to the JROC has largely been a cultural issue and has to do with the nature of how we see the use of the airplane,” Tenney explained. “The land components–the Army, the Marines and the [Special Operations] community–see this as part of the maneuver forces. And so that’s different than how the traditional airlift community has seen their role.”
He explained that the Air Force has in the past envisioned its airlift effort as one of a “point to point delivery system, where those points are very well defined, very well controlled locations.”
Tenney attributes the shift in the air service’s attitude to the leadership of its new chief of staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz. In his previous position as head of Air Force Transportation Command, Schwartz “talked about delivering that ‘last tactical mile’ for the ground forces,” Tenney explained.
“So he’s brought that leadership and perspective to the Air Force–delivery to the point of need and maneuver to austere, unimproved locations,” he said. “And it’s beginning to resonate from the top down.”
Approximately $40 million in FY ’08 and ’09 was budgeted for technology investigation and requirements definition for JFTL. The top five efforts include 11 contracts, some of which fund JHL concept refinement studies by Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] Boeing [BA], a Karem Aircraft-Lockheed Martin [LMT] team and United Technologies [UTX] Sikorsky Aircraft.
Tenney said the inter-service differences on the project have now been resolved, and the Air Force is committed to the effort.
“They want to support the land component. This is just a different method of transport than they’ve done before,” he said. “I think the official position is…the Air Force is open to the solution set, and we’re going to go through a legitimate analysis and let the chips fall where the analysis says they should.”