The next article in a continuing Monday morning series on The Air Force’s C-17 airlifter cargo plane built in Long Beach.
The first bout of this match, also known as the fiscal 2009 supplemental funding bill, is over and the C-17 defenders are the winners. The prize?–
C-17 production well into 2011. We now move back into the ring for Round 2 of the next matchup, aka the 2010 Defense Budget.
On Thursday, last week, President Obama signed into law the fiscal 2009 supplemental funding bill. The main purpose of this bill, supposedly the last such bill, is to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was necessary because the Bush Administration’s 2009 defense budget did not include the war funding, so it had to be passed as a separate measure. This should be the last such supplemental funding bill because the Obama Administration will include the war funds in the annual defense budget, starting with next year’s budget.
With the signing of the supplemental funding bill, the trophy, aka C-17 production, was handed to the C-17 Defenders and the line rolls on. The bill included $2.2 billion for 8 more C-17s, which should keep the line running into the second half of 2011. Boeing is working on 6 international orders, which if contracted, will ensure production through the end of that year. Thus ends the first bout.
Although Round 2 in the second bout did not get much press, the fight is definitely on. For those who might have forgotten, Round 1 of this fight was on April 6, 2009 when Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said “With regard to air lift, we will complete production of the C-17 airlifter program this fiscal year. Our analysis concludes that we have enough C-17s with the 205 already in the force and currently in production.” The 8 more planes provided for in the first bout are in addition to the 205 referred to by Gates. So now, with already 8 more planes than the Administration says they want, the fight moves to the 2010 defense budget.
The government’s fiscal 2010 year runs from October 1, 2009 through September 30, 2010 and it is the Obama Administration’s submitted budget recommendations for this year which started this fight. The Administration did not request any funds for continued C-17 production and also requested funds for an “orderly shutdown of the line”. Almost immediately after the Administration said they would not request any production funds for the C-17 in next year’s defense budget, attention shifted to the ring where the fight for the current fiscal year was raging in the form of the Supplemental funding bill.
As noted above, the C-17 defenders clearly were the victors in that first bout, but they won it, at least in part, because the Obama Administration Challengers hardly put up a fight. In our 24/7 tracking of C-17 news, we did not find any times where the Administration stepped into the ring to aggressively challenge the C-17 Defenders. Nearly everything President Obama and Secretary Gates, or there spokespersons, says or writes is tracked by a variety of sources. Your Editors monitor those sources for C-17 comments and found no comments supporting the April 6 budget recommendation to terminate C-17 production.
Not only was the Administration essentially silent on their C-17 termination recommendation, but the mainstream press did not ask the probing questions about it either. Your Editors have read all of the transcripts of high level Pentagon press conferences since April 6 and in none of those question and answer sessions did the press ask about the C-17 termination. Nevertheless, the victor for Round 2 of the second bout is the Administration C-17 Challengers. That is because while the rest of the World was watching the election turmoil in Iran and the untimely death of Michael Jackson, the Senate Armed Services Committee was hard at work on nothing less than–you guessed it–next year’s defense budget.
Since the public and the mainstream press were occupied as noted above, your Editors found only one major news source which was paying attention last week to the C-17 fight. Reuters reported on Thursday that the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a measure “authorizing defense spending for fiscal 2010 that largely supports the Pentagon’s proposed weapons cuts”, including the ending of C-17 production. The Administration’s victory in this Round certainly is only a small success. There will be many more rounds before this bout is over and the 2010 defense budget is signed into law. It has been reported that Boeing and the C-17 Defenders are looking for 15 more C-17s in the 2010 defense budget. Since Boeing makes that number in a year, that would provide for the 2012 production. If the C-17 Defenders win this fight, it would set the ring for the annual C-17 bouts of the future. We will be watching–so far, Round 2 of the second bout goes to the Administration Challengers.
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About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
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