{"id":77288,"date":"2013-10-09T03:18:59","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T02:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/air-force-after-spending-500-million-sending-fleet-directly-into-storage\/77288\/"},"modified":"2013-10-09T03:28:55","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T02:28:55","slug":"air-force-after-spending-500-million-sending-fleet-directly-into-storage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/air-force-after-spending-500-million-sending-fleet-directly-into-storage\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force, after spending $500 million, sending fleet directly into storage"},"content":{"rendered":"
The US Air Force has sent a dozen brand new cargo planes that cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars directly from the assembly line into a storage facility in the Arizona desert, according to a new report.<\/div>\n

At least twelve C-27J Spartans, a medium-sized military transport
\nplane, have been removed from military service and sent to
\nDavis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. The base was
\ngiven the nickname \u201cboneyard\u201d after years of inactivity. Five
\nmore planes are expected to be built and sent to the base by
\n2014, according to an investigative report by Ohio’s Dayton Daily
\nNews.
\n\u201cThey are too near completion for a termination to be cost
\neffective<\/i>,\u201d said Air Force spokesman Darryl Mayer.<\/p>\n

The Air Force has spent $567 million on 21 Spartans since 2007.
\nWhile 16 of that 21 have been built, 12 of them now sit at
\nDavis-Monthan alongside thousands of NASA and military flight
\nvehicles exceeding $35 billion in value.
\n\u201cThis aerospace fleet provides a unique savings account from
\nwhich military units throughout the world may withdraw parts and
\naircraft<\/i>,\u201d stated Davis-Monthan’s website. \u201cThe government
\nearns additional income by selling aircraft to our allies<\/i>.\u201d
\nThe C-27J gained favor in the military for its ability to land on
\nand depart from rough landing strips. The aircraft, which began
\nproduction in 1997, has also been ordered by the militaries of
\nAustralia, Greece, Mexico, and Romania, among others. But the
\nnagging threat of sequestration coupled with the government
\nshutdown has convinced the Pentagon that Spartans are an
\nunaffordable luxury.
\n\u201cWhen they start discarding these programs, it’s
\nwasteful<\/i>,\u201d Ethan Rosenkranz, a national security analyst at
\nthe Project on Government Oversight, told the Dayton Daily
\nNews.
\nOhio lawmakers were among the most passionate defenders of the
\nC-27J, in part because of the 800 workers at Mansfield Air
\nNational Guard Base who would have been employed to build the
\ntransport planes. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, along with six
\nother Democratic senators, wrote a letter to the Pentagon in 2011
\nasking for 42 aircraft, warning that choosing to do otherwise
\nwould \u201cweaken our national and homeland defense<\/i>.\u201d
\nMike O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institute said the situation
\nseemed to be the result of narrow-mindedness.
\n\u201cIt’s too bad, and a waste<\/i>,\u201d he said. \u201cI’m not sure the
\nprogram was ever a white elephant, and yet given the budget cuts
\nI’m not sure it should be saved now<\/i>.\u201d
\nGeneral Norton Schwartz, a former Air Force Chief of Staff, told
\nCongress last year that the military was seeking to cut its C-27J
\ninvestments in anticipation of federal budget constraints. The
\nC-130, he said, can fulfill all of the Air Force’s current needs
\nand costs $213 million to fly and maintain over 25 years. The
\nC-27J costs an estimated $308 million per aircraft, according to
\nthe Daily News.
\n\u201cIn this fiscal environment it certainly caught our
\nattention<\/i>,\u201d Schwartz said.
\nDavis-Monthan Air Force Base itself has become another casualty
\nof the government budget crisis. While US Defense Secretary Chuck
\nHagel ordered hundreds of civilian employees back to work at
\nbases across Arizona, the unpaid time off has certainly impacted
\nmorale.
\n\u201cThere were a few employees who were exempt from the furlough,
\nso the ones that were furloughed, there was a lot of animosity
\ntoward the ones that weren’t,<\/i>\u201d Harley Hembd, president of the
\nAmerican Federation of Government Employees, told KJZZ radio in
\nArizona. \u201cAnd, now some of the employees that are coming back,
\nthe others aren’t happy because they’re thinking somebody got
\npaid for time off.<\/i>\u201d
\nMateriel Command spokesman Ron Fry categorically denied the base
\nin question is a bone yard, saying \u201cthey have a very robust
\nmission to turn aircraft and equipment back into service<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright: RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Air Force has sent a dozen brand new cargo planes that cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars directly from the assembly line into a storage facility in the Arizona desert, according to a new report. At least twelve C-27J Spartans, a medium-sized military transport plane, have been removed from military service […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-77288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}