CARGO PLANE FLUNKS EXAM

One of the most con­tro­ver­sial pro­posed cuts to the Pentagon bud­get is the slash­ing of funds for the C-130J cargo plane. Earlier this month, two dozen Senators called on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to keep the car­rier’s cash intact. And Air Force offi­cials have sud­denly started gush­ing about their “out­stand­ing tac­ti­cal air­lifter.”
But Tom Christie, who heads the Pentagon’s test­ing and eval­u­a­tion office, isn’t impressed.
In a new report, he calls the C-130J “nei­ther oper­a­tionally effec­tive nor oper­a­tionally suit­able.” The plane’s “capa­bil­i­ties are lim­ited.”
Christie’s eval­u­a­tion found “hard­ware, soft­ware, and tech­ni­cal order defi­cien­cies,” in the air­craft, as well as “man­u­fac­tur­ing qual­ity” and “sub-sytem reli­a­bil­ity.”
“The air­crafts defen­sive sys­tems have yet to demon­strate that they will work prop­erly and the air­crafts air­drop mis­sion has yet to be eval­u­ated by Christies office,” the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) notes. And the weather recon­nais­sance ver­sion of the plane is still hav­ing issues with “radar per­for­mance in hur­ri­cane recon­nais­sance mis­sions, pro­peller anti-ice pro­tec­tive cover peel­ing, and exces­sive vibra­tion.”
POGO says it’ll have the C-130J eval­u­a­tion online later today. Or, for $25, you can down­load Christie’s com­plete report, which looks at just about every major Pentagon project there is, from Inside Defense right now.

January 24th, 2005 | Planes, Copters, Blimps | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.