North Carolina Air National Guard members make their way to their C-130 Hercules Feb. 6 at Charlotte, N.C. Due to strains on the force, the Air Force is about to ask C-130 Reserve air crews, which are all maxed out on their service commitments, to volunteer instead, said Gen. Duncan McNabb, Commander of the Air Mobility Command. (Courtesy of U.S. Air Force)
ARLINGTON, Va. — Air Force readiness is down 17 percent since 2001, Gen. Bruce Carlson, Commander, Air Force Materiel Command told reporters Monday at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington at a press roundtable with nine other Air Force generals during a Combat Air Forces/Mobility Air Forces Commanders’ Conference.
Personnel and airframes are both feeling the strain of high operations tempos provoked by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, added Gen. Ronald Keys, Commander of the Air Combat Command.
The Air Force uses a sliding scale of C1 to C4 to measure the readiness, with units graded C1 and C2 prepared to “go and accomplish the mission,” he said.
But when units are rated C3 or C4, “you have to find major workarounds,” Keys said.
Since 2001, the Air Force has seen “the percentage of units in C1 and C2 [status] in a steady decline,” Keys said.
“Wear and tear on the fleet is visible,” said Gen. Duncan McNabb, Commander of the Air Mobility Command.
But personnel are also a concern, Keys said, especially the so-called “one-to-one dwell time.”
One-to-one dwell is what the Air Force calls the six months on, six months off deployment schedule airmen with high-demand skills, such as air transport crews, military police, or intelligence experts, are experiencing.
The troop increase for Iraq announced by President Bush in January put an additional strain on air transport capabilities, McNabb said, although the Air Force is still determining how many transport crews it will ultimately have to contribute to the so-called “surge” effort.
“Mobility could be large” numbers of Air Force personnel, McNabb said. “We’re not sure.”
Keys said the Air Force is also analyzing how many fighter planes and pilots it will contribute, along with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their crews.
The Air Force is preparing to call for C-130 Reserve air crews to volunteer for deployments, said Lt. Gen. John Bradley, Chief of Air Force Reserve.
The service has to ask for volunteers instead of mobilizing reservists outright because all of the Air Force’s C-130 Reserve crews reached their two-year mobilization limit in the fall of 2006, Bradley said.
The Air Force has about 150 C-130 crews in the Reserves, Bradley said, and not having access to those crews potentially puts a serious strain on the service’s ability to provide transport in combat zones.
Jim Miller, a spokesman for the Air Force Reserve Command at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., told Stripes on Tuesday that Air Force Reserves provide 21 percent of in-theater airlift in the Middle East.
That percentage could include a combination of C-17 and C-130 aircraft, he said.
“But most of it is probably C-130s, because that’s the stated purpose of the C-130, to fly intratheater,” as opposed to opposed to long-range flights, he said.
When the Reserve C-130 crews began to max out on their remaining service time, the Air Force filled the gaps with the C-17 transport, McNabb said.
The next step, he said, is to have more active-duty and Reserve units sharing C-130 aircraft, as the Air Force once did with its strategic bomber force.
The first mixed active/Reserve C-130 unit will be in Cheyenne, Wyo., McNabb said (the 153rd Airlift Wing of the Air National Guard).
Meanwhile, however, McNabb and Bradley said they are confident that enough C-130 crews will answer the call to volunteer.
“I think we can do this C-130 business for a long, long time with volunteers, not mobilizations,” Bradley said.
