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Mission STS-118: Investing in Future Exploration

Mission STS-118: Investing in Future Exploration

08.28.07

Every mission that adds to the International Space Station brings the first-of-its-kind orbiting research facility one step closer to completion. But the STS-118 mission went one step further by also reaching out directly from space to the next generation of explorers. The 13-day mission was highlighted by a series of conversations between students on Earth and crew members including teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan, as well as installation of the S5 truss and external stowage platform 3. The crew also transferred equipment and supplies to the station on the flight, which was the last for the SPACEHAB module. Space Shuttle Endeavour rose from its oceanside launch pad on time at 6:36 p.m. EDT on Aug. 8, 2007. The liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida marked Endeavour's return to space after spending four-and-a-half years in an extensive overhaul period. The newly improved orbiter performed well during the climb to orbit. Image to right: Space Shuttle Endeavour roars skyward on the STS-118 mission. Image credit: NASA/John Kechele, Scott Haun, Tom Farrar The first full day in space focused on inspecting the orbiter's heat-resistant thermal protection system. The crew used the orbiter boom sensor system to methodically sweep over Endeavour's wings, nose cap and orbital maneuvering system in search of possible damage sustained during launch. The day concluded with a review of tools to be used during the upcoming rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station. Flight Day 3 began with Commander Scott Kelly putting Endeavour through the rendezvous pitch maneuver, a slow-motion backflip below the station. This allowed Expedition 15 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and station Flight Engineers Oleg Kotov and Clay Anderson to take video and still images of the orbiter's underbelly. The images taken during the maneuver revealed areas of tile damage, and managers chose to do a focused inspection the next day to get a better look. After docking, the shuttle and station crews opened the hatches between them and warmly greeted one another in a welcome ceremony. The day also featured the first activation of the new Station-Shuttle Power Transfer System, which enables the orbiter to draw power from the space station for an extended stay. Image to right: Endeavour rotates through the rendezvous pitch maneuver, allowing the space station crew to photograph the vehicle's thermal protection system. Image credit: NASA Mission Specialists Dave Williams and Rick Mastracchio ventured out of the station's Quest airlock on Flight Day 4 for the first of the mission's four spacewalks. During the six-hour outing, the duo provided assistance as Pilot Charlie Hobaugh used the station's robotic arm to attach the new S5 truss segment on the starboard side of the station's backbone truss structure. Mission Specialist Tracy Caldwell served as the spacewalk coordinator during each of the mission's excursions. A more focused inspection of Endeavour's thermal protection system the following day revealed one particular area of concern: a 3.5-inch-by-2-inch gouge in the tile, apparently a result of foam that broke off the external tank during launch, bounced off one of the tank's struts and impacted the orbiter's underside. NASA's Mission Management Team, which meets daily during space shuttle missions, began several days of analysis on the tile issue to determine the best course of action. The team also announced the mission would be extended from 11 to 14 days due to the perfect operation of the new power transfer system, and added a fourth spacewalk to the itinerary. On Flight Day 6, Williams and Mastracchio participated in the mission's second spacewalk, replacing a failed control moment gyroscope with a new, fully functioning unit. There are four such gyroscopes on the station: two to maintain the outpost's orientation and two backup units. Image to right: The Expedition 15 and STS-118 crews gather in the Destiny laboratory on the International Space Station. ISS crew members on the front row, from left: Flight Engineer Clayton C. Anderson, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov. STS-118 crew members on the middle row, from left: Alvin Drew, Barbara R. Morgan and the Canadian Space Agency's Dave Williams, all mission specialists, and Commander Scott Kelly. STS-118 crewmembers on the back row, from left: Pilot Charlie Hobaugh, along with Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio and Tracy Caldwell. Image credit: NASA Caldwell celebrated her birthday in space on Flight Day 7. Despite the festive occasion, the day's to-do list was a long one. Using the shuttle's robotic arm, Caldwell and Mission Specialist Morgan carefully removed an external stowage platform from Endeavour's payload bay. With Hobaugh and Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Clay Anderson using the station's arm, the astronauts secured external stowage platform 3 to the station's P3 truss. The day's activities continued with a question-and-answer session from space with students gathered at the Discovery Center of Boise, Idaho. During the event, Williams, Morgan, Anderson and Mission Specialist Alvin Drew answered a wide variety of questions submitted by inquisitive students, such as, "How does being a teacher relate to being an astronaut?" "Astronauts and teachers actually do the same thing," Morgan answered. "We explore, we discover and we share -- and the great thing about being a teacher is we get to do that with kids." Flight Day 8 was highlighted by the mission's third spacewalk, during which Mastracchio and Anderson spent more than five hours preparing the P6 truss and solar arrays for their move to the end of the P5 truss during the upcoming STS-120 mission. Mission Control ended the spacewalk early after Mastracchio discovered a small hole near the thumb of his left glove. The hole was in the second of five layers and did not cause any leak or danger to him. However, as a precaution, he returned to the Quest airlock while Anderson completed his final task. Image to left: Mission Specialist Rick Mastracchio (shown) and Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Clay Anderson (out of frame) participate in the mission's third spacewalk. Image credit: NASA Morgan and Drew spoke with students at the Challenger Center in Alexandria, Va., on Flight Day 9. June Scobee Rodgers, widow of Challenger Commander Dick Scobee, hosted the educational event in which students again had the chance to speak with the astronauts. Later that day, the Mission Management Team announced its decision not to conduct a spacewalk to repair the tile. Days of testing and analysis on the ground had shown that the gouge was not a danger to the crew or the orbiter, and a spacewalk to repair it would have carried an additional set of risks. Another concern soon appeared as computer models indicated the powerful Hurricane Dean could affect NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, home of Mission Control. Faced with the possibility that Johnson may need to close in the coming days, mission managers ultimately decided Endeavour would undock from the station one day earlier in order to land Aug. 21, one day ahead of schedule. The mission's fourth and final spacewalk highlighted Flight Day 11, as Williams and Anderson spent about five hours working to install an antenna and a stand for the shuttle's robotic arm extension boom, as well as retrieve experiments from the station's exterior for analysis on Earth. Following the final spacewalk, the shuttle and station crews said farewell and the hatch closed. Image to right: Backdropped by a blue Earth, the International Space Station, in its new configuration, moves away from Space Shuttle Endeavour. Image credit: NASA Shortly after Endeavour undocked from the station the next morning, Mastracchio and Caldwell used the orbiter boom sensor system to conduct one final "late inspection" of the shuttle's protective tiles to ensure the thermal protection system was ready to withstand the trials of re-entry. With Hurricane Dean now headed toward Mexico, managers chose not to close Johnson Space Center. Endeavour's landing schedule was not changed. The astronauts spent their final full day in space stowing equipment and supplies and testing the orbiter's steering jets and flight control surfaces in final preparations for landing. The STS-118 mission ended on Aug. 21 as smoothly as it started. After a perfect deorbit burn and a safe journey through Earth's atmosphere, Endeavour touched down on Kennedy Space Center's Runway 15 at 12:32 p.m. EDT, wrapping up a nearly 5.3-million-mile voyage designed to inspire future generations. Anna Heiney NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

Heavy Lifters

The condition of the strategic mobility force continues to improve.

Heavy Lifters

By John A. Tirpak, Senior Editor From a hardware perspective, things couldn't be much better for mobility forces. The Air Force is receiving new strategic and tactical airlifters and loading equipment, the Navy is getting new sealift ships, and the Army is buying new railcars. Pre-positioned equipment is funded and in place, civilian air- and sealift auxiliaries are near full strength, and even some problem infrastructure items--like aging fuel tanks--are getting overhauled. Mobility forces are "healthy," Air Force Gen. Charles T. Robertson Jr., the new chief of US Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command, told Air Force Magazine. The state of the force, he said, is a result of lessons learned in the 1991 Gulf War and subsequent defense reviews, the last of which, now two years old, gave to lift more focus and attention than it had received in some time. The Global Air Traffic Management program-which will update Air Force cargo and tanker aircraft to be compliant with new international avionics standards-was even given add-on money once it became clear that, without it, US air mobility forces would be restricted to less-desirable routes and altitudes and denied certain overflight rights. Not even a program, as such, two years ago, GATM is now fully funded, Robertson said. However, readiness spending-spare parts, depot maintenance, and, especially, operating tempo and benefits to AMC people-are front and center as concerns, and he worries about the trends in retention of pilots and crews. The Defense Department is also preparing to overhaul its stated lift requirements, having rethought many of the assumptions that underpin the mobility force size it is now pursuing. "By every predictive indicator, by every metric we use, we're meeting all the conventional requirements, as we measure readiness," Robertson said. "Our C-ratings are fine; even departure reliability rates and [mission capable] rates-though declining-are still in the acceptable range." The Unseen Problems What troubles him most are "the things that you don't measure." These have to do with the morale-sapping effects of a prolonged, elevated operating tempo; military pay "that is perceived to be inadequate;" turbulence in moving to the "still maturing" Tricare health system; the scarcity of high-quality child care; and problems with things as basic as household goods movement, he said. In the general's view, these are quality-of-life concerns that give a private sector job much appeal at the moment. With national unemployment so low and given that "the commercial sector right now is doing better than we are" in addressing quality-of-life issues, "we're coming up short," Robertson observed. Air Mobility Command has designated 1999 as the "Year of the Family." The theme is intended to highlight concerns about family life in AMC and help the Air Force take visible steps to improve it, Robertson said. This is especially important, he asserted, because "it's not just [Air Force] members making these decisions" about whether to remain in military service. "It's families. ... And they are ... weighing all these factors" such as child and health care, as well as pay and retirement. Introduction of the new Expeditionary Aerospace Force concept, unveiled this summer, will go a long way toward easing quality-of-life problems, Robertson said. While operating tempo "is high, and it always will be," due to AMC's being a worldwide, constantly in motion cargo operation, the EAF concept will give planners far more lead time in knowing what units will have to move to forward bases at a given time. That in turn will permit AMC to give its crews--Regular, Guard, and Reserve-better warning of when they'll be deploying and for how long. Moreover, "this predictability" will permit AMC to do a more thoughtful analysis with the warfighting units involved to figure out the most efficient means of moving what really needs to deploy as well as what doesn't. "We can tailor their requirement to a reasonable load that's right for them and right for us," Robertson asserted. The predictability of deployment will also permit greater use of the Guard and Reserve, he added. "They want to play more [of a role]; they want to contribute more to the total Air Force mission, and their problem has always been that they are limited in how far in advance they can see a mission," he explained. "Now they'll be able to see them six months in advance ... and make the maximum contribution [possible] to the requirement." Greater foreknowledge of what it will be doing allows greater Total Force participation and reduces turbulence, which has been a hammer on active retention, Robertson noted. A Welcome Change The EAF concept "is a good thing for AMC. ... It is an idea whose time was probably a year ago; we should have thought of it sooner," he said. The timing of the EAF coincides with the launch of a new Mobility Requirements Study. Known as the MRS-Bottom Up Review Update, or MRS­BURU, this study will kick off this fall and is a follow-on to the one done for the 1996­97 Quadrennial Defense Review. It will set the stage for the next QDR's discussions on lift requirements. The MRS-2005 begins with a fresh set of assumptions. The new study, being undertaken by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff, drops the notion that mobility forces will begin from a standing start in the next war, garrisoned in the continental US. Instead, it is now assumed that mobility forces will be deployed around the world--as they commonly are--when the next war starts. The MRS­BURU also only set requirements for supporting two nearly simultaneous Major Theater Wars that would begin roughly 45 days apart. It did not include other missions that might be required, such as strategic brigade airdrop, special operations, and nuclear war operations. In a synopsis of the new assumptions, USTRANSCOM noted that "a one-MTW in combination with any of these [additional missions] could be a driving factor in force structure decisions. The MRS-BURU only looked at a two-MTW scenario without any other [National Command Authority]-type missions." Moreover, the study will consider the force in light of a tightened time interval between the two MTWs--the period having dropped from 45 days to 30 days. This has implications for the call-up of Guardsmen, Reserves, and the Civil Reserve Air Fleet and decision times for activating them. The Joint Staff now considers the previous 45-day interval "very optimistic," according to USTRANSCOM. While the MRS-BURU assumed that "all allied nations would support mobility operations," it didn't consider that an ally might either contribute some lift capability of its own or deny host nation support, especially if it is under threat of weapons of mass destruction. The MRS-2005 will weigh these possibilities. The concept of "fort-to-foxhole" operations will underlie the MRS­2005, and counted in it will be constraints at CONUS bases, the en route system, and the processing capacity at receiving ports overseas. The MRS-BURU focused only on strategic lift, port-to-port, and some en route capacity. One program that will be strongly affected by this reconsideration of airlift assumptions is USAF's C-17 Globemaster III transport. More than 40 C-17s have already been delivered and more are coming at the rate of about one per month. So far, except for small growing pains normally associated with introducing a new system, the C-17 has performed admirably, and within five years, all of the planned 120 aircraft should be in service. The addition of the special operations element on MRS-2005, however, could raise the requirement to 135 C-17s. Roots of the Requirement When AMC set the C-17 requirement at 120 aircraft, it neglected to consider the need to replace a squadron of C-141s performing a special operations role, Robertson noted. After TRANSCOM and AMC conferred on the issue, officials determined that the Air Force needed "about 15 C-17s" to fulfill the special ops requirement, which is over and above the 120 needed for strategic mobility. The 120 C-17 fleet "only provides you the capability to meet, with moderate risk, the requirement for two [Major Theater Wars]," Robertson explained. "If we pull 15, or whatever the requirement is, for special operations, you reduce that airlift capability" for the warfighting commanders in chief. There may be alternatives to buying C-17s and no decisions have been made, Robertson said, because there is "plenty of time" to decide the issue before the Globemaster III line starts to shut down. The C-141 will depart from Regular service in 2003 and will be out of the Total Force inventory in 2006. Last to go will be the SOF aircraft. Robertson said he is not worried about the availability of spare parts or USAF's "sense of ownership" on the Starlifter for the years when it is a Guard and Reserve airplane exclusively. "Because we paid attention and thought about it and built the contingency plans and got all the right players involved before it became a problem, it has turned out not to be one," Robertson asserted. While it is true the flow of new-production spare parts will slow down once the C-141 leaves the Regular force, the C-17s that have already retired and will be in storage at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., will be available for parts, he noted. "We will ... take care of the reserves" when they take over the C-141, he said. "The system will continue to repopulate the parts. ... Bases will continue to train for the C-141. ... We'll continue to do just what we're doing today." The only major unresolved airlift hardware issue concerns what to do about the C-5 Galaxy. "The C-5 has the lowest [mission capable] rate, the lowest departure reliability, the highest cost per flying hour, the highest maintenance per flying hour," Robertson noted. "We need to do something about that." Replacing the C-5 with a new airplane is considered extravagant, since the type still has perhaps 15 years of service life remaining without a structural improvement. Evidently, an upgrade is the most cost-effective option, but AMC is looking at all alternatives. "I can't say with 100 percent certainty" that an upgrade will be the option chosen, said Robertson, "but it makes sense." While a solution is needed as soon as possible, Robertson said he's aware that the "pot" of projects demanding money "is about full." It will be five years before a comprehensive upgrade could begin in earnest. Billions to Fix The most pressing need is to replace the C-5's engines. Waiting in the wings is state-of-the-art equipment that would be vastly more reliable and fuel efficient and which could in one step resolve most of its departure-rate woes. That and a raft of other enhancements would increase the C-5's departure reliability from 70 percent to 95 percent with a 75 percent mission capable rate. Two separate studies conducted by Lockheed Martin and the Institute for Defense Analyses determined that such a program would cost nearly $5 billion. Currently, the Air Force does not have that kind of money to spare. The Air Force wants to make a start, at least, toward addressing the C-5 problem. According to Robertson, it currently has under way a modification program to replace the engines' high-pressure turbines. It costs $250,000 per engine to carry out the program, a manageable expenditure that will increase the amount of "time on wing" for each engine from 1,200 hours to as much as 3,000 hours, Robertson said. This increased interval between engine overhauls will help with reliability, but it "certainly is not where we need to be," when modern airliner engines average 8,000-10,000 hours between overhauls. "It's obviously an interim fix," he said. The good news is that the engine fix "will pay for itself" in just a few years through avoidance of the cost of so many engine change outs. In addition to GATM-required avionics in the C-5's cockpit, there will be additional navigational, communications, and safety changes to the C-5, collectively priced at about $900 million. It is "working its way through the contracting process now," said Robertson. The comprehensive upgrade, if it comes, will include many costly improvements. Besides the re-engining, the program would feature installation of a glass cockpit, new hydraulics, new landing gear, and structural improvements to the wing--"the same sorts of things we did with the KC-135," Robertson added. Until such an overall refurbishing is under way, "the C-5 is a worry," he said, especially since, during the transition from C-141 to C-17, it will be "the backbone of air mobility." The KC-135 update, coupled with an aggressive program to "turn back the clock" on the aging Stratotankers, is yielding excellent results, Robertson said. Corrosion is the major headache with the KC-135, but "if you talk to the experts, and take their word for it, they've turned the corner on that," Robertson claimed. Under a program called Coral Reach, massive amounts of data have been collected about how--and specifically where--KC-135s will experience the most corrosion. Robertson noted that, at Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Tinker AFB, Okla., officials "have pretty good confidence ... that they can predict where the problems are going to be the next time the aircraft comes in for depot maintenance." Each visit to depot maintenance is getting shorter as corrosion problems are found, sanded off or patched, and then sealed with an anti-corrosive agent. "They are better able to prepare for, take apart, repair, and send back out" a KC-135 "in less time," Robertson said. Still Spry The KC-135, upgraded with GATM­compliant avionics and other improvements through the PACER CRAG program, should remain in service "farther out than we can predict," Robertson added. Though it is chronologically an old airplane, the KC-135 spent many of the Cold War years simply sitting alert to refuel nuclear-armed bombers. In that role, it did not rack up flying hours at a great rate. The aircraft's structure is still fairly young. "It's going to be around awhile, and it's going to need to be, because we have a tremendous need for it," Robertson observed. AMC has looked at replacing the tanker fleet. Boeing has tabled a proposal for a 767-derived tanker; a similar derivative of the C-17 has been discussed. However, said Robertson, "all the evidence indicates ... it is not a higher priority than some of the other things that are more troublesome." GATM regulations have already gone into effect in some places, and AMC is hard hit because its mandate is to be able to go anywhere at any time. Some airlines which operate only in a given area do not need to comply with all GATM rules, just the ones that govern their region. Rules for altitudes and aircraft separation differ from ocean to ocean and continent to continent. Robertson noted that the KC-10 is not an airplane that gets much public mention. He said that the airplane has no glaring mechanical or structural problems, is only about 10 years old on average, and is a "stalwart performer" with regard to mission capable rates and departure reliability as both a tanker and an airlifter. There is some "serious" commercial interest in the C-17 as both a cargo carrier and even as a tanker, Robertson said. Some airlines are contemplating the use of commercial tankers to refuel airplanes on especially long routes-a move which would save the considerable time and expense of en route airport landings and refuelings. Air Mobility Command would welcome commercial sales of the C-17 in both roles, and it is watching commercial developments closely "to see how they might fit in with CRAF." CRAF Comes Back Under the Civil Reserve Air Fleet program, commercial carriers agree to be on call for national emergencies, ready to carry troops or materiel to a far-off contingency. In exchange, they are not only paid for their services but are compensated in other ways-for example, by getting preferential treatment in the award of contracts for package delivery, government passenger travel, charters, and cooperative use of military air facilities. Airline participation in CRAF has been "very good" for the last four years, Robertson said. Participation fell in the period immediately following the Gulf War, which saw the first major call-up of CRAF assets. Carriers became worried about insurance on their aircraft, safety of their pilots, and loss of market share to nonparticipating rivals for duration of the conflict. Retired Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, then head of USTRANSCOM (later Air Force Chief of Staff) established preferential policies that brought CRAF participants back. Today, most CRAF categories are full or even oversubscribed. "We've met every requirement [in CRAF] except for aeromedical evacuation," Robertson noted. In that category, he continued, "we're five airplanes short," but the requirement is being reconsidered and alternatives are under study, so he is not worried, especially since the requirement is in Stage III, the last stage of CRAF to be called up. The program is well above required capacity elsewhere in Stage III. In wide-body equivalents, the requirement is 136 airplanes and participation exceeds 170. Likewise, in cargo, the Stage III requirement is 120 airplanes, and the actual capacity is more than 175. Given that the program yields a huge chunk of national airlift capacity during wartime, said Robertson, "CRAF is good for the Air Force, DoD, and our industrial partners, and we're going to try to keep it that way for all of them," Robertson said.

Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR)

Personnel recovery has become an increasingly important mission area receiving added emphasis among OSD policy makers and throughout DoD. It is significant that recent world events requiring military planning options also involved the deployment of combat search and rescue forces. In each instance, recovery assets were among the first to arrive in theater so they would be ready to support combat operations. Additionally, soon after planning began during recent crises, the White House staff requested the Joint Staff provide their concept of personnel recovery for the contingency for review. Presidential interest was high concerning the safety of US military forces and our ability to recover them if necessary.

The USAF has been designated by DOD as the lead service for Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR). To meet the requirements of a lead service, the Air Force has equipped and trained specialized rescue forces to conduct CSAR.

The primary operational task of rescue is to locate, communicate with, and recover downed aircrews and isolated personnel. This primary task can be broken into three sub-tasks. Locating the aircrew or isolated personnel (survivor) by visual or electronic search methods to pinpoint the survivor’s location and permit recovery. Communicating with the survivor by radio or visual signaling to conduct authentication. Recover the survivor to return the survivor to friendly control and provide the survivor necessary medical assistance.

Additional, non-rescue specific, operational tasks that must be completed to accomplish the primary rescue task include: (1) provide personnel and equipment to train rescue mission ready personnel, (2) operate efficiently during peacetime, (3) airdrop rescue personnel and equipment, (4) configure rescue equipment for deployment, (5) provide self-protection for rescue assets, (6) conduct medical evacuation operations, (7) provide intelligence support directly to the rescue aircrew, (8) respond to and prepare for rescue mission execution, (9) control alert and airborne rescue missions, and (10) support rescue sortie production.

The ability to return isolated personnel to safety is a moral and ethical imperative, so the Air Force made procurement of this new CSAR aircraft one of the highest weapon system procurement priorities. American and coalition war fighters can rest assured the Air Force will come to get them, no matter where they are. Today's battlefields are non-linear and non-contiguous, changing shape and venue with speed that outpaces and out-reaches legacy aircraft. The Air Force must have a more capable next-generation CSAR aircraft to better support US and coalition personnel isolated from friendly forces by distance, threat, weather and enemy action. The Air Force is committed to leaving no one behind - a commitment that gives all members of the joint and coalition team the confidence to perform vital work in hostile and uncertain circumstances.

The USAF has a long history of excellence conducting Search and Rescue operations in times of conflict and in times of humanitarian need. In World War II, Army Air Forces (AAF) elements partnered with the British to demonstrate the first US aviation rescue capability. After the war, the AAF consolidated Search and Rescue operations and training under an organization that in 1964 became the Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service (ARRS). During the Vietnam era, ARRS CSAR Task Forces saved 4120 personnel, 2780 of those in combat. "Jolly Green Giant" rescue crews were highly regarded by their fellow aviators and highly rewarded for their heroism. They earned two Medals of Honor, 39 Air Force Crosses, and countless Silver Stars. Since 1979, the Air Force has awarded seven Mackay Trophies - given annually for the year's most meritorious flight - for rescue mission flights. Air Force CSAR Airmen have rescued over 470 members of the joint and coalition team in the Central Command AOR alone since 9/11. Finally, in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricanes, Air Force personnel rescued 4544 Americans from the flood-ravaged Gulf Coast.

Thanks to decades of successful Combat Search and Rescue missions, America's enemies understand our commitment to recovering isolated friendly forces. Unfortunately, America's enemies have also repeatedly demonstrated they intend to exploit captured personnel to undermine American strategic objectives. Effective CSAR denies the enemy the ability to exploit our courageous war fighters by returning them to safety. While other services do personnel recovery, the Air Force is the only service with forces dedicated entirely to CSAR. Whether stranded by downed aircraft, surrounded by a hostile enemy, or abducted by terrorists, isolated personnel know they can rely on our Air Force CSAR professionals to do their job. Every day CSAR assets conduct operations across the spectrum of conflict. These dangerous missions are inherently high risk.

To accomplish the primary task, the US Air Force currently maintains two operational systems, the HC-130N/P and the HH-60G. The HC-130 provides long-range search capability in a no-to-low threat environment, day or night. The HC-130 also provides a limited command and control link for all rescue assets during a rescue mission, and extends the range of the rescue helicopter by providing in-flight air refueling. The HH-60 provides limited search and recovery of the survivor in up to a medium threat environment, day or night. If a survivor requires immediate medical attention and cannot wait for the arrival of the recovery helicopter, threat environment permitting, specially trained Pararescuemen (PJ) can be airdropped to the survivor using parachute deployments. Once on scene, the PJ will stabilize the survivors and prepare them for recovery.

The threat environments that rescue assets operate within can be adjusted by the use of supporting aircraft. Supporting aircraft providing air-to-air, air-to-ground, and Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) coverage can degrade the threat, either temporarily or permanently, permitting rescue assets to enter the area and execute the recovery. Rescue forces may be augmented by these supporting systems depending on the threat environment, distance to the survivor, and availability of assets.

Anything, Anywhere, Anytime

Anything, Anywhere, Anytime Airlift is so effective that the demand always has--and probably always will-- exceed the supply.

Lt. Gen. William H. Tunner, who commanded the airlift over the Himalayan Hump in World War II and the Berlin Airlift after the war, said in his memoirs that "I have been convinced that we can carry anything, anywhere, anytime." The force has borne out General Tunner's expectation for more than fifty years through an organizational evolution from Air Transport Command to Military Air Transport Service to Military Airlift Command to Air Mobility Command. Indeed, so reliant have the armed forces become on Air Force transport of troops and cargo that it is the airlifters, not the shooters, that are the limiting factor in national military strategy. The demand for airlift never stops. In a typical peacetime week, Air Mobility Command operates 1,000 missions and more than 3,000 sorties into forty countries. Airlift is not the only way to move troops and cargo, but it has certain advantages. Military Airlift Command flew more than 500 sorties to resupply Israel during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The first flights landed within forty-eight hours of the US decision to act. The first sealift vessel to reach Israel carried more tonnage than all the airlift missions put together---but that ship did not arrive until twenty days after hostilities had begun and twelve days after the cease-fire. Airlift is a primary element in the Air Force's operational concept of "Global Reach, Global Power." Airlift is more than support for other forces. It is an instrument of national power in its own right, providing aid, presence, and strength at pivotal moments in distant locations. The big airlifters with the Stars and Stripes on the tail deliver the clear message that the United States is there. Two years ago, the outlook for airlift was grim. The core airlifter, the C-141 Starlifter, was in deep trouble, having been flown hard and held in service far beyond its intended retirement date. At one juncture, seventy percent of the C-141s were either grounded or restricted. The proposed replacement, the C-17, was in danger of cancellation. In a dramatic statement to Congress in 1994, Gen. Joseph Hoar of US Central Command said that "airlift in this country is broken right now. I'm not sure it's workable for even one major regional contingency." Air Mobility Command said it could provide the lift for one contingency---but not for the two prescribed by national defense strategy. In an amazing reversal of fortunes, the C-17 overcame its performance, production, and cost problems. The program is splendidly back on track. In November, the Defense Department authorized the Air Force to proceed with a procurement that will eventually reach 120 aircraft. The decision on whether to also buy modified "nondevelopmental" commercial aircraft has been deferred until next summer. An "aggressively managed" modernization effort will keep the C-141 operating until it is phased out in 2006. Estimating the airlift requirement is a controversial business. In an Airpower Journal article last year, Lt. Col. Robert C. Owen, former chief of the Joint Doctrine Branch at Hq. USAF, argued that the demand for airlift always has (and probably always will) exceed the supply and that "effective airlift policymaking involves asking for what one can get instead of what one actually needs." In 1981, the Congressionally mandated Mobility Study set the official requirement for airlift at sixty-six million ton-miles per day. The computed requirement was understood to be higher, but that was essentially academic since the capability peaked below fifty million ton-miles per day. After the Cold War ended, a 1992 Mobility Requirements Study adjusted the goal downward to fifty-seven mtm/d. The current goal, set in 1995, is stated as a range: forty-nine to fifty-two mtm/d, depending on the stock of equipment and supplies prepositioned abroad. Present wartime airlift capability, counting activation of the Guard and Reserve and mobilization of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, is approximately forty-nine mtm/d. The Air Force will assign as much as it can of the routine airlift---especially bulk cargo that can be loaded onto standard freight pallets---to commercial carriers. Other parts of the mission, however, cannot be farmed out. Only the largest military airlifters carry outsize cargo, such as main battle tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and artillery. The Air Force would also use its own aircraft, probably the C-17s, for airdrop and forced entry operations. Civilian airliners would not normally be asked to fly into areas where there is appreciable risk of hostile fire. Power projection and crisis response are roles best suited to military airlifters. No one seriously believes that an airlift capability of fifty million ton-miles per day is lavish. Nevertheless, airlift does not stir the passions and has traditionally had trouble holding its funding priority. There are already signs from some corners of the Pentagon of wobbling on the commitment to airlift modernization. The problem is financial competition with other programs. This would be the wrong place to fall short for a nation with global interests and strategies and whose armed forces are largely based at home. Whatever lies ahead, airlift will be a first order requirement. This time, the priority should hold. The case for airlift is considerably more compelling than the requirement (for example) for more submarines.

Airlift Reality Check

Air Mobility Command took the Kosovo operation in stride, but there weren't enough tankers and airlifters to support a second crisis, had it come to that.

Airlift Reality Check By John A. Tirpak, Senior Editor

In Operation Allied Force, Air Mobility Command did a masterful job, delivering everything US and NATO officials asked, and more. USAF's airlift and aerial tanker fleets logged 7,600 sorties during the deployment and redeployment of NATO's forces, transporting 32,000 passengers and 52,645 tons of equipment. The mobility forces also carried out a major humanitarian relief operation, frequently in the most primitive conditions. Yet the Balkan air action, for all its successes, also underlined an unpleasant truth: The Air Force simply doesn't have enough airlift to support US forces should they be called on to fight and win two Major Theater Wars in close succession-the benchmark of national strategy. Experts preparing a new Pentagon airlift analysis planned to state this fact plainly, for the record, and to establish a firm requirement for more airlifters. Some new aircraft already are on the way. The Air Force earlier this decade programmed a C-17 fleet of 120 aircraft. That plan, however, has been overtaken by events. The forthcoming USAF budget plan for 2000-05 contains full funding for 14 additional C-17s plus an unfunded requirement for a 15th. Allied Force and its aftermath laid bare some critical mobility problems for AMC. One is the vulnerability of transports to shoulder-fired missiles. Another is the inadequate crew ratio in tankers. Yet another is the difficulty of maintaining the C-5 Galaxy fleet. In USAF's post-conflict reconstitution effort, the C-5 is demonstrating record-low mission capability. Some are demanding improvements or even replacement of the C-5s. Insufficient Force Structure? Gen. Charles T. Robertson Jr., the AMC commander who also serves as commander in chief of US Transportation Command, discussed some of these problems in a recent interview with Air Force Magazine. Robertson noted that, at the height of the Balkan War, officials conducted an investigation of whether USAF's airlifters could handle the task of swinging critical elements of the fighting force engaged in one MTW to a distant second MTW, as well as move US-based forces to the second hot spot within required timelines. It couldn't. Robertson said, "We figured it would take us ... eight days longer to swing the force to a second MTW ... than we had previously planned." This finding, the general noted, caused "a bit of a gulp." Current US national security strategy calls for American forces to be able to fight and win two near-simultaneous MTWs in widely separated parts of the world. Robertson declined to quantify the interval between the two MTWs--the exact figure is classified--but agreed that it's "something like" the figure of 45 days that has been widely published here and elsewhere. The emergence of the eight-day lag means that only 85 percent of the US force redeployment would be completed by Day 45. Analysts determined that the airlift deficiency was caused by the operational posture of the airlift force in Europe during Allied Force. Specifically, the fleet of C-17 airlifters was heavily committed to intratheater work, transporting to Albania the US Army's Task Force Hawk--helicopter gunships, tanks, artillery, air-defense missile batteries--rather than providing long-range, intertheater airlift, as principally intended. Much of the C-5 fleet is only about 10 years old, meaning an upgrade to fix its many reliability problems might be economically feasible. The C-5 has plenty of airframe life left and is unmatched in its outsize-cargo carrying capacity. (USAF photo by SSgt. Efrain Gonzalez) The heavy use of the C-17 as an intratheater airlifter in Europe "robbed all the other [Commanders in Chief] of their day-to-day exercise and sustainment capabilities while Kosovo was going on," Robertson noted. The operation "raised their interest level" in the amount of airlifters available, he added, noting that the requirements of the CINCs are a primary driver of the new mobility requirements review. In recent Congressional hearings, Robertson was asked to spell out how well AMC could carry out the two-MTW requirement. He said the risk is "medium for the first, high for the second. That's unchanged. ... To swing to a second is high risk." Robertson added that he hasn't been able to determine in hard numbers just where the medium risk becomes high risk or what is the width of that high band of risk. He and the other CINCs have all said "high is unacceptable," added Robertson, and he hopes some relief will come from the new Pentagon study. Long before Allied Force, Pentagon officials commissioned the new Mobility Requirements Study, called MRS-05, to identify airlift forces needed in the Year 2005. The study was carried out by the Joint Staff and the DoD Program Analysis and Evaluation Office. Plans called for its release this month, but the analysts some time ago had telegraphed its principal conclusion: The US doesn't have enough airlift, and it will have to buy more. Up a Million Until now, the US officially had a requirement to supply 49.7 million ton-miles per day of airlift capability, and to be able to supply it day after day. The new study was expected to call for increasing the requirement by at least 1 million ton-miles per day. MRS-05 indirectly takes the Balkan conflict into account in calculating the airlift capability needed. Robertson was aware that more airlift seemed called for. "Does an increase of a million short tons require an increase in [strategic] lift?" he asked. "They think it does. I think it does." Several real-world factors not considered in previous mobility studies were considered in MRS-05. For example, it takes account of the fact that airlifters generally are not at home bases waiting for an operation to be ordered, as previously assumed. Rather, they are at any given time positioned all over the world and would have to reposition themselves to handle a different operation. The study also considered what would happen to airlift operations if a mobility base took a direct hit from a weapon of mass destruction, putting a significant fraction of the fleet out of action temporarily or permanently. The presence of chemical or biological weapons, Robertson noted, also "significantly reduces our ability to use commercial airlift and sealift" to support an operation. The concept of commercial air carrying some outsize cargo is being assessed. Finally, more realistic assumptions about the actual reliability and availability of airlift are incorporated into the analysis. The initial runs of the computer models being used to assess the ability of the force to perform to the strategy indicated a requirement for strategic airlift beyond 135 C-17s already in the Air Force plan. Analysts are now looking at the war to see how much the addition of 15 C-17s would affect the shortage. When we get to 135 C-17s, said Robertson, the Air Force probably still won't have enough to conduct day-to-day peacetime operations. The Air Force, though it has come up with the money for those 14 new airlifters, is still unable to get full funding for their spares, simulators, and support gear. Costs total $1 billion for the first 14 airplanes, $180 million for the 15th. Boeing has made an unsolicited proposal to produce 60 more C-17s, a move that would defer the end of production from 2003 to 2007. Efficiencies gained from spreading overhead cost over more airframes and from a sharp learning curve would reduce the unit price by 15 percent, Boeing claims. The out-the-door cost of a new C-17 would drop from today's $198 million to $149 million by the time the last C-17 came off the line. The last batch would have increased range due to inclusion of new fuel tanks. The Air Force has not formally responded to the proposal, but there is still interest, Robertson reported. "That offer ... is very attractive." He added that an additional C-17 buy is in the mix of options as to how to fix shortfalls with the C-5, which is losing ground in the fight to uphold mission capability and on-time departure. Possible alternatives to buying more C-17s include using more commercial airlift and sealift. "No Squirming" When the Kosovo operation erupted, Robertson noted, there was "no squirming" in the Civil Reserve Air Fleet-the group of commercial carriers that agrees to lease aircraft and crews to the government in wartime in exchange for peacetime cargo contracts. They were ready to join the effort, but CRAF was not activated for the conflict. CRAF will be fully subscribed with participants in 2000 and will not have any gaps in aeromedical evacuation, which has long been a problem to fill out. Robertson warned, though, that policy-makers shouldn't count too heavily on the commercial sector to pick up slack in airlift capability. "There's no excess capacity in commercial lift," he pointed out, noting that the demand for air cargo and delivery services is growing sharply. "We have to be very careful what we promise our customer on a day-to-day basis, as far as commercial augmentation goes, because ... we need to get in line with everyone else who wants it." The situation is "another reason why an organic airlifter is very important in the peacetime equation," he added. Air Mobility Command managed the Balkan operation without resorting to a massive call-up of the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve-or even adding substantially more flights per day-but by shifting the way it does its business, according to Col. Larry Strube, director of global readiness at AMC's Tanker Airlift Control Center at Scott AFB, Ill. During a normal day, Strube said, AMC runs about 300 missions to support exercises and sustainment operations worldwide. When the magnitude of Allied Force became evident in February, however, AMC decided to cut into the fenced-off missions reserved for training each day-those dedicated to air refueling and normal continuation and upgrade training, Strube said. The "fence" came down on Feb. 18; that freed up, for operational purposes, about 100 flights per day that would have been used for training. To avoid building up a maintenance backlog on its aircraft, AMC typically reserves some percentage of each type for necessary maintenance. With respect to the C-17, Strube said, "We try to schedule 85 percent of the ... aircraft on a daily basis. That's the maximum we'll schedule." Though "there were days when we actually went to 100 percent" of the C-17 fleet, he added. "We have at least managed our aircraft so that we weren't hurting the long-term health of the fleet." As a result, there was no huge maintenance or depot backlog after Allied Force as there was after Desert Storm, when a substantial portion of the airlift fleet was grounded, pending long-deferred maintenance. After Allied Force, "we did not have any major impacts on our depot schedules," Strube reported. The C-17 can get into all kinds of places that would previously have been off-limits to a big cargo airplane. Without the C-17, Task Force Hawk would never have gotten to Tirana, Albania, before the 78-day Yugoslav conflict ended. (USAF photo by SSgt. Chris Steffen) Spares at the Ready Because of departure reliability problems with some types, AMC sent along maintenance crews and spare parts to Stateside bases to meet aircraft when they arrived to pick up equipment for shipment to Europe. Sometimes, if aircraft were available, a spare aircraft would also be sent. The practices prevented many mission aborts. Just to move Task Force Hawk, an Army contingent of tanks, armored vehicles, troops, and Apache attack helicopters from Ramstein AB, Germany, to Tirana, Albania, took 542 C-17 missions involving 24,000 short tons of cargo. The airlift took 30 days, at about 20 missions a day. Strube said that part of the speed with which the airlift was accomplished was due to the Air Force having converted Tirana from a daylight-only airfield into a 24-hour-a-day air base by deploying a portable microwave landing system there. Also, the C-17's head-up display and other high-tech gear made the Tirana airlift go more swiftly, Strube said. "The fact that the Air Force spent the money for some high-tech, cosmic systems [on the C-17]," said Strube, "gave us a nighttime precision capability" in very tight spaces in high terrain. Many criticized the long delay in deploying the Army unit, but many of the missions were limited by the extreme weight of Army gear. The M-1 tank, for example, is so heavy that a C-17 can only airlift one at a time. Allied Force marked the first time the M-1 has been moved by air during hostilities. In mid-October, the Army announced it would restructure itself to be lighter and more deployable. The move was driven by the fact that the Army "sat out" Allied Force, having been too heavy to get to the action in a timely fashion. In particular, the Army wants to develop a new tank with the capability of the M-1 but at half its weight or less. "The Army's trying to get lean and lethal," Strube said. "Obviously, if you're ... light, you get more there in a hurry. In this case, the C-17 was the perfect airplane to do this and performed extremely well." Robertson said, "It did everything ... we asked ... with a 97 percent reliability rate." In moving Task Force Hawk from Germany to Albania, the C-17 was able to land, unload, and take off again in an average of 40 minutes and do it on an austere airfield with lots of small debris posing a great foreign object damage threat. The capability of the C-17 was "the reason we got Task Force Hawk into Tirana as fast as we did," he said. The 30-day transit period did not seem fast to some critics, but without the C-17, the airlift would have been impossible, Robertson said. "You cannot get into the Third World nowadays, with these kinds of taxiways and runways, without this kind of capability [found in the C-17]," said Robertson. "The C-5 couldn't do it. The C-141s are going away. The C-130s aren't big enough. So that's a success story for the C-17," he asserted. During the operation, AMC lost about 2,500 sorties that would have been used for training, Strube said. While some of those training sorties-notably in air refueling-were more than made up by real-world experience, many more, such as upgrade and aircraft commander qualifications, had to be made up later. After Kosovo, all of AMC reduced its scheduling by roughly 10 percent to get maintenance backlogs caught up as well as to get personnel through missed training sessions. The AMC norm of 300 missions per day was changed; it dropped to about 240 per day, Strube said. Plans called for AMC to be caught up and back to pre-Kosovo scheduling by late November. The austere facilities, short runway, and limited ramp space at Tirana are typical of the conditions the airlift fleet now faces around the world. In Allied Force, the C-17 was pressed into intratheater lift work, causing a strategic airlift shortfall. (USAF photo by SSgt. Chris Steffen) Galaxy Woes The C-5 mission capable rate during the reconstitution period was "down to 56 percent," Robertson reported. It is a figure, he said, that "waters my eyes." Not counting the post-Kosovo downtime, he said, "We've been using 61 percent as a recent average," which is still markedly below the goal of 75 percent. Re-engining the entire C-5 fleet to raise mission capable rates and departure reliability to manageable levels would be an expensive proposition. The Pentagon has undertaken an analysis of alternatives to see what mix of repairs, updates, and new airplanes offers the most capability at the lowest cost. Robertson suggested applying a pass-fail test to a C-5 upgrade "just like we did on the C-17" earlier this decade, when that aircraft had to pass a reliability, availability, and maintainability assessment to win approval for a multiyear contract. In this concept, he said a squadron's worth of 10-year-old C-5Bs would get new engines and other improvements to determine if the upgrade would deliver a worthwhile payback in performance. If it did, a larger-scale refit could be considered. A huge percentage of AMC's tanker assets-95 percent of regular aircraft and crews and 65 percent of Guard and Reserve tanking capability-was tagged to Operation Allied Force. With 294 crews and 160 tanker aircraft involved, Allied Force was "the most tanker-intensive operation we've had since Desert Shield and Desert Storm-maybe even bigger than that," Robertson said. Had the order come down to implement an even larger deployment of forces to the theater-something Robertson said was imminent when Slobodan Milosevic accepted NATO's terms-virtually all of AMC's tanker assets would have been used, with nearly all Guard and Reserve capability called up. AMC deliberately tried not to touch tankers at Pacific bases to have them available if a second MTW erupted in Korea, Robertson noted, but even tanker units at Kadena AB, Japan, and Eielson AFB, Alaska, wound up contributing either crews or airplanes. In fact, AMC had a tighter supply of aircrews than aircraft. The AMC aircrew-to-tanker ratio is normally 1.35 active and 1.27 Guard and Reserve, but NATO commander US Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark insisted on an in-theater ratio of 1.8, "and so we flat ran out of aircrews," Robertson said. A ratio of 1.56 had been proposed as the new tanker manning level even before Allied Force broke out. Now, "we think our tanker [crew] requirement is valid ... as a result of Kosovo," he added. C-17s for the Theater Part and parcel of the MRS-05 study will be another analysis of intratheater lift, Robertson noted, and the C-17 may be more formally designated in this kind of mission. There were some lessons learned in Kosovo that did not suggest buying more equipment, Robertson observed. The operation underscored that planning staffs in overseas headquarters have become "pretty lean ... on tanker expertise," due to the pilot drawdown and staff manpower cuts. The Allied Force Combined Air Operations Center in Vicenza, Italy, initially demanded more tankers than were needed at the time. AMC drafted planners and a "tanker colonel" to go to the CAOC to help the commander "work mobility issues and ... requirements," said Robertson. It was a good lesson, he added. Another one was putting 12 C-17s under the direct command and control of the CAOC, for missions like airlifting Task Force Hawk. The temporary change in ownership was a "tremendous success story," said Robertson, because it improved the speed at which orders could be transmitted and airplanes moved where they needed to be. "It's something we're going to have to go back and write into the doctrine, as to how that's done," Robertson said. However, one lesson does require a substantial infusion of funding which simply isn't available for the foreseeable future. That lesson was the lack of self-defense mechanisms on airlifters operating in or near the combat zone. "Every day ... there was a lot of talk about airdropping relief supplies to the [ethnic Albanian] refugees who were still in-country" but who had fled their homes in Kosovo, Robertson explained. "We were facing a real dilemma because the threat environment would not allow us to do that. There is no protection for our strat airlifters against [infrared surface-to-air missiles]," particularly those of the shoulder-fired variety, he said. The problem is being worked, Robertson said, but the solutions are "not cheap." To outfit the entire airlift fleet, including C-130s, with such self-defense mechanisms would cost over $6 billion, he said. AMC is looking at what's the right number of airplanes to equip. "We're trying to figure a way ... to find a number that's in the hundreds of millions, rather than billions, and stretch it out," he noted. "There aren't a lot of solutions to the problem." The requirement for self-defense has just been stated, and the Air Force labs and Electronic Systems Center are working on possible answers. The big lesson is that such systems "will certainly help us operate in areas where we're going to be increasingly restricted from operating," said Robertson. In the Kosovo operation, newly modified Pacer CRAG KC-135s, which are fitted with new avionics, were not allowed to operate in the European theater without restrictions imposed by the host countries. The airplanes operate traffic collision avoidance systems, weather radar, station-keeping equipment, and other new avionics that NATO nations were worried would interfere with civilian radio-frequency functions. "We finally got a waiver for single-ship operations" but not the standard formation flights, Robertson noted. He had hoped that the single-ship operations would demonstrate that Pacer CRAG wouldn't have an impact on civilian functions. Worldwide, however, nations are "jealously guarding ... the frequency spectrum," said the general. "They want ironclad assurances we won't interfere" with anything else in the frequency spectra involved. Europeans were expected to approve Pacer CRAG for unrestricted operations, but Robertson said, "Our acquisition processes are moving faster than our ability to get host nation approval."