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Edited on Wed Sep-22-10 08:27 AM by zipplewrath
"The C-5, because of its size and power, can carry things that neither of the other platforms can carry. This is especially important in terms of heavy armor, such as the Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle. It requires a long runway, but if a long runway can be captured by our forces, the C-5 is capable of quickly moving armored units into position that can control, defend, and bring order."
Yes, the C-5 can carry AN Abrams tank. Exactly one Abrams as I recall. It doesn't do all that well with Bradley's either. So suggesting that we can "quickly mov armored units" is a bit dependent upon the definition of "quickly". The C-5 is very old as well, which has additional costs associated with maintaining the platform. And, it makes some significant presumptions about the need to quickly move armored units around the world "quickly". A special forces dominated military as we are currently seeing in two wars, isn't exactly the top need for armor either. So one wonders about the need for the ability to "quickly" deploy armor at all. And although the C-17 can't land in the same places a C-130 can, it has very good short field capabilities. A C-130 can't land some places that smaller cargo aircraft can, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. It is a balance of all the capabilities, and the C-130 has some pretty severe cargo limits as compared to the C-17.
I don't have a position on which aircraft should be kept. But it does occur to me that the C-17 is the "youngest" of the airframes, and that the C-5A, while impressive, and massive, exists as much because of some concept of "size matters" as anything else. The C-130 has one over riding factor going for it, there are thousands of them around the world. But that could work against them in the realization that they can be easily "leased" or "outsourced" if the need arose. Otherwise, their work can be split between smaller cargo aircraft, and the C-17.
Quite honestly, one can make a case to eliminate 2 platforms, the C-130 and the C-5A and just keep the C-17, as well as much smaller cargo aircraft such as the Army C-23B.
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