Taking shots at the Pentagon’s 2006 Mobility Capability Study was the name of the game at a March 7 House Armed Services hearing on Air and Land Forces. Ranking member James Saxton (R-N.J.) asserted that the MCS, begun in 2004, was designed to take a “hard look” at airlift needs in the post 9/11 world, but it “didn’t say much.” Saxton continued: “There were no hard questions asked by the MCS, and there were certainly no answers in the MCS.” Now, he said, we await the “five more studies” called for in the Quadrennial Defense Review. William Solis, with the Government Accountability Office, pitched in, reminding panel members that GAO found the central MCS conclusion that a strategic mobility fleet of 180 C-17s and 112 C-5s would be adequate through 2013 was “based on incomplete data [and] inadequate modeling and metrics … [and its] results were incomplete, unclear, or contingent upon further study.” Everyone now is waiting for the other studies—due dates unknown—to hopefully shed some rational light on the subject.
Amid NATO’s continued push to ramp up air defenses in Eastern Europe, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall swung by seven allied countries to boost relations last week, including those on Russia’s and Ukraine’s doorstep.