Thompson Files: C-130 production lessons

ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Continuous production of the C-130 since its inception has been a major factor in sustaining the plane’s utility, affordability and political support.

When an aircraft production line closes, the team of specialists who understood every facet of that airframe’s design and manufacture drifts away to other projects. This “critical mass” of skills and experience is almost impossible to reconstitute once lost, and even when it can be rebuilt the cost is very high.

Unlike most other military planes conceived during the Cold War, the Hercules today continues to benefit from a warm production line and a workforce that thoroughly understands its product. That makes every facet of manufacturing, modification and maintenance easier than it otherwise would be, and minimizes the likelihood that mistakes will be made as new variants are introduced. It also is helpful to have a stable and committed political constituency at the state level and in Congress that can guard the longstanding C-130 franchise against ill-conceived efforts to curtail federal funding. That constituency would disappear if production ceased.

All of the above lessons lead to a common conclusion about the appropriate path forward for policymakers. The federal government needs a long-term plan for the continued production of the C-130J Super Hercules.

Because there is no suitable alternative for replacing hundreds of aging aircraft in the domestic fleet, because dozens of allies will require the same airframe for their own modernization needs, and because the intrinsic merits of the latest Hercules are unlikely to be matched by any other airframe for the foreseeable future, the plane needs to remain in production indefinitely. Once this reality is faced, the main question remaining is how to purchase the required planes at the most economical price.

Studies indicate that a sustained annual purchase of 16 aircraft for U.S. users, supplemented by foreign orders, would offer the lowest cost consistent with military needs and budgetary constraints. Committing to a multiyear purchase of that magnitude would assure that the global Hercules franchise -- a franchise built on versatility, affordability and reliability -- thrives in the years ahead.

More generally, the inventory of C-130s owned by overseas operators tends to be concentrated in areas of greatest strategic interest to the United States. In the Middle East, the C-130 is operated by Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia, among others.

In the Western Pacific it is operated by Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. In the Amazon Basin, virtually every country drained by the world’s mightiest river has the Hercules in its air fleet.

So the most common airlifter in most of the regions where U.S. civil and military agencies are likely to be operating in the future is a plane that American pilots know well.

The value of having an American airframe so widely distributed around the globe is measurable in both economic and operational terms. No other military aircraft has successfully penetrated the global market so thoroughly for so long. But preserving this franchise for future generations of war fighters, crime fighters, scientists and humanitarian relief workers must begin with decisions made in Washington, because it is demand from the federal government that sustains the production line for the C-130.

--

(Loren B. Thompson is chief executive officer of the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank that supports democracy and the free market.)