Senators raise questions on Air Force bid for more cargo planes

A bipartisan trio of senators is raising questions about whether the Air Force has launched an inappropriate, behind-the scenes campaign to secure more funding for Boeing Co.'s C-17 Globemaster III aircraft.

In a letter Friday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Senate Armed Services ranking member John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Thomas Carper, D-Del., raised concerns that the Air Force may have given Boeing assurances it would keep production going on the cargo plane, which has enjoyed significant congressional support over the years.

In March, Boeing said it would shut down C-17 production lines if Congress did not step in and buy more planes. Three months later, the aerospace giant announced that it would invest its own money to keep the C-17 lines open.

Citing a June 19 Boeing statement that there are "increasing signs that the U.S. Air Force has requirements for 30 additional C-17s," the senators said they feared Air Force optimism spurred Boeing to avert a production line shut down.

"The Air Force has informed us that it does not intend to request funding for additional C-17s in next year's budget," they wrote. "We are therefore disturbed by the possibility that the Air Force may have induced the prime contractor into assuming the business risk of covering the costs of keeping long-lead-time parts available -- ostensibly to ensure the continuity of the C-17 production line until new Air Force orders materialize."

Doing so would be "inappropriate, especially if it exposes taxpayers to liability in the event that Congress declines to purchase additional C-17 aircraft," they added.

The senators asked Gates to clarify his plans for the C-17 and requested he respond by July 30 to several questions -- including one seeking the department's "official position on the Air Force's apparent communications" with Boeing.

An Air Force spokesman said Monday the service is aware of the letter, but added that it would be "inappropriate" to comment.

"The Air Force stands by ready to assist [the Defense Department] in their response to ... the senators," the spokesman said. "The Air Force is committed to transparency and accountability in all of our major weapons system acquisition programs."

A Boeing spokesman said he could not comment on communications between Congress and Gates.

The Air Force did not request any funding for new C-17s next year, but gave Congress a list of "unfunded requirements" -- priorities it could not fit into the fiscal 2008 budget -- that includes $472.8 million to buy two C-17s.

Air Force leaders have argued they could buy more C-17s if Congress would lift restrictions preventing them from retiring C-5 Galaxy cargo aircraft. The Air Force would like to retire 30 older C-5s, which are twice the size of the C-17, but far older. And service leaders have not been shy about declaring the versatile C-17 a more valuable asset than the C-5.

Kennedy and Carper are part of a small, but vocal, coalition of C-5 backers who fear buying more C-17s would put the Galaxy's modernization at risk. McCain, who successfully challenged a now-defunct Air Force lease agreement for Boeing KC-767 aerial refueling tankers as a bad deal for taxpayers, continues to cast a suspicious eye on both the service and the aerospace giant.

The House-passed fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill includes $2.4 billion to buy 10 C-17s, which supporters say are needed to transport the influx of troops in an enlarged Army and Marine Corps. But the Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the bill does not have money for more C-17s.

House appropriators plan to follow House authorizers in September, when they consider the fiscal 2008 wartime supplemental spending bill. Meanwhile, Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said in an interview in March that he prefers buying more C-17s.