Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

by Tom Clancy

  In January of 1982, Lockheed, Senator Nunn, and the state of Georgia got an order for a second production run of the Galaxy, designated the C-5B. Along with this came the sixty-aircraft buy of KC-10A Extenders, which would be built by McDonnell Douglas. This left the folks at Long Beach in a strange position. Their new transport aircraft program had just been drained of funds and stretched out, but they now had a huge multi-year contract to build tankers on an existing production line. One senior Douglas official described it like finding out the beautiful, rich girl you are dating is a blood relative. She will probably share the wealth eventually, but that will be the extent of the relationship!

  For Jim Worshem, the legendary president of the Douglas Aircraft Company, these events forced him to make a number of pragmatic and common-sense moves. He shifted almost all the skilled engineers and technicians he had hired to work on the C-17 over to KC-10A tanker and commercial transport work, and adjusted the program schedule to reflect the new, stretched-out funding profile dictated by the USAF and Reagan Administration. In the short term, it was a good thing for Douglas, which was able to hire even more production and support personnel to deal with the existing workload.

  Meanwhile, design work on the C-17 continued for some years to come, gradually transforming the old YC-15 prototype design into a larger, more powerful production design. The actual design process went well and generally on schedule and budget, but a chill was beginning to come over the C-17 program, and it almost killed the new airlifter. The change came as a result of something completely unrelated to the Globemaster program: a Justice Department/DoD investigation of contractor insider-information trading known as Operation III Wind. Ill Wind was a wide-ranging probe of Administration/contractor relationships in which government personnel would sell “insider” programmatic and technical information to contractors for a price. By the time the probe was completed, a number of DoD officials and senior contractor executives, including Undersecretary of the Navy Melvin Pasily, had been sent to jail, and huge fines had been exacted from a number of contractors.

  Ill Wind had one other unpleasant effect, in that it caused almost all the military and civilian personnel assigned to manage procurement programs to take on a hostile, even adversarial, relationship against the “money-grubbing” defense contractors and their perceived “obscene” profits. Now, anyone who thinks that an 8 to 12 percent profit margin on a program as risky as the C-17 is obscene clearly is lacking some knowledge of the business world, but that was the atmosphere in the late 1980s. Then, in 1989, the wheels really fell off.

  The year started in a promising fashion, with fabrication of the prototype C-17A going along, albeit with some problems. Part of these difficulties were due to the business realities of the aerospace industry at that time. Finding qualified technicians and engineers in Southern California in the late 1980s was tough, and this led to some poorly qualified personnel being brought onto the Douglas payroll at higher salaries than had been planned. This led to cost escalations which caused future acrimony between the USAF program offices and Douglas. There were problems with weight growth on the Globemaster, which is not unusual in today’s military aircraft programs. The difficulty here was that the USAF program managers were completely inflexible on any modifications to the C-17 contract on either technical or financial grounds.

  On top of all of this, those same program managers failed to inform the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Dick Cheney at the time) of the cost and engineering difficulties when his staff did a review of major aircraft programs (F-22, F-18, C-17, V-22, A-12, etc.). Only after Cheney had presented his report to the Congress, and canceled the V-22 as a cost-cutting measure, did the problems on the other programs come out. It turned out that Navy’s A-12 managers had actually lied to OSD about critical problems, and their program was canceled outright.

  The difficulties on C-17 took a bit longer to come out, but when they did, a firestorm erupted. Initially these took the form of financial claims by Douglas against the USAF about mandated changes that had cost them money. The Air Force came back with claims against Douglas for shortfalls in contract progress and performance, and design shortcomings. What resulted was a virtual war between the management at Douglas and the C-17 program office which just got worse and worse.

  The final straw came over a required structural test of the wing. As part of the USAF-mandated weight reduction program, Douglas designers had removed several structural members from the wing to help make the goal. Unfortunately, when the engineers went back and ran their computer structural models, they discovered that the software was predicting a wing failure during a coming overload test of the wing. The test was designed to verify that the wing could sustain a 150 percent stress overload over the design requirement. Unfortunately, the engineers knew that the wing would fail at one of the “thinned out” spots at 129 percent. When Douglas reported this to the Air Force program office, they were refused permission to fix the problem prior to the test. In particular, the government program manager felt that allowing them to make the change would somehow show USAF “weakness” towards the contractor. He ordered that the test go forward, whatever the results. It did, and the wing broke precisely where the engineers had predicted, at exactly the 129 percent load. This was a patently stupid act, and it was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back.”

  By this time, the OSD had enough of the problems and decided to act. For starters, they fired the USAF program management team, and then called the executives of McDonnell Douglas in for a talk. To this day nobody on either side will say exactly what happened, but when the meetings were done, there was a completely new management team running the C-17 program at Douglas. Both sides withdrew their claims against each other, and got to work to solve the problems of the C-17. They also let the Douglas engineers fix the wing!

  Now, nothing goes wrong overnight, and neither are engineering and financial problems as bad as those faced by the C-17 team solved quickly. Nevertheless, by early 1993, things were beginning to turn around for the Globemaster, though you would have been hard pressed to know it. A new Democratic Administration had taken over in Washington, and all parties involved knew that the C-17 would come under a new and uncomfortable scrutiny.

  The man who drew the duty of deciding life or death for the Globemaster program was John Deutch, the Undersecretary of Defense for Procurement. 45 His decision for the future of the C-17 was anything but easy, though. When he took over the OSD procurement office, there was immense pressure to cut the defense budget so that the money could be applied to other priorities of the Clinton Administration. On the other hand, you did not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the need for the C-17 was greater than ever. If any event had validated the vision of the original C-X program specification and requirement, the 1991 Persian Gulf War had been it. Desert Storm had used up over half of the C-141 fleet’s remaining fatigue life in less than six months of operations, and airframes were already being flown to the boneyard in Arizona.

  There were reasons for optimism about the Globemaster, though, because the new government/contractor management team had taken hold and was getting results that were frankly amazing. By utilizing a concept known as Independent Product Teams (IPTs, “rainbow” groups of military and contractor personnel assigned to accomplish specific sub-tasks of a project), the engineering problems on the C-17 were rapidly being solved. Also, by this time there had been a number of significant milestones and achievements in the program. First flight of the prototype came on September 15th, 1991, and the first production aircraft was delivered to the Air Force on June 14th, 1992. The first paratroop drop, with soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, had even taken place on July 9th, 1993. The first lot of production aircraft was under contract, and would be delivered whatever Deutch decided. But there also was immense pressure from critics in Congress to kill the program, as well as from competitors like Lockheed and Boeing who wanted to take a crack at the airlifter problem. I
n the end, Deutch came up with an inspired decision.

  He decided to saddle the C-17 program with a production cap of only forty aircraft for a two-year “probationary” period. Only after the two years, and a thorough examination of the aircraft system in actual operations, would a decision be made to purchase additional airframes. Also, to show everyone in the Air Force and at McDonnell Douglas he was serious, he ordered the USAF to initiate the Non-Developmental Airlift Aircraft (NDAA) program, which was designed to procure off-the-shelf heavy transport aircraft in the event that the C-17 did not make the grade. Properly warned, everyone involved in the Globemaster program, from the Pentagon program office to the Long Beach production line to the flight line at Charleston AFB, South Carolina (the first operational C-17 base), sucked it in, knowing that this was their last chance to prove that the new bird was a winner. Amazingly, it was all uphill from that moment on.

  Some folks will say that Douglas and the Air Force were lucky. I would tell you that they were ready for the opportunities that came their way in the next few years. However you view the situation, the C-17 team has met or exceeded every challenge that was thrown at them since the new management team took over. Whether it was a no-notice deployment to Rwanda to support relief operations, or disaster relief after a hurricane, the new bird came through and delivered the loads with flying colors, doing things that other airlifters would not even have tried. Amazingly, though, it was the hauling of a single person for a twenty-minute flight that sealed the future for the C-17. That person was President William Jefferson Clinton, and the ride was to the short, bumpy airfield at Tuzula in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

  The President had wanted to visit the troops of Task Force Eagle (the American peacekeeping force) as a show of support for the troops and for his policy in the region. Now, you do not fly a jumbo jet (like the President’s VC-25A) painted up like a billboard into such a place as Tuzula without drawing unwanted attention. So another way had to be found to get the Chief Executive, his entourage, and all the media personnel into Tuzula. In the end, the only transport with the necessary short-field and all-weather performance, as well as the necessary defensive countermeasures against SAMs and radar-directed AAA fire, was—you guessed it—the Globemaster. So, when the President showed up wearing his favorite flight jacket, along with the entire White House press corps, the C-17 program was saved. The feeling around DoD was that if this bird was good enough for the Boss, it was okay to buy more.

  Quickly, the NDAA program was allowed to die, and the USAF decided that the C-17 would be the only heavy airlifter the USAF would buy for the foreseeable future. It was therefore with more than a little pride that the C-17 team managers accepted personally from President Clinton the largest multi-year military procurement order in U.S. history, in mid-1996, for eighty additional Globemasters. Even better, there is talk of buying more. But first, let’s take you on a little tour of this incredible bird before we talk about the distant future.

  For this we will take a quick trip down to Charleston AFB, to visit the 437th Airlift Wing. In late 1996 the C-17A was operational with the 14th and 17th Airlift Squadrons (AS) of the 437th, with the 15th AS getting ready to transition from the C-141 to the new bird. For our tour, we’ll spend some time with aircraft 93-0600, which is also known as aircraft P-16 (the sixteenth production aircraft, which was funded in FY-93). It was delivered to the Air Force in November of 1994, fully a month early. This matter of early delivery is getting to be more and more common on the C-17 program, and is now the rule rather than the exception. Early deliveries mean cheaper planes for the taxpayers and higher profits for the stockholders of McDonnell Douglas, so it is a “win-win” situation for all involved. Despite being heavily flown since delivery, P-16 is a clean and neat aircraft, without so much as a scratch or smear to mar the finish, inside or out. At something like $175 million a copy for the early-production C-17s, you’d better believe that the USAF crew chiefs take good care of them. The good news on this point is that Douglas is calculating that late-production C-17s will cost the taxpayers around $210 million.

  One thing to keep in mind, though. The whole idea of an aircraft like the Globemaster is absurd unless, of course, you have the kind of overseas commitments that the United States has. In that case, the heavy airlifter fleet is more precious than its weight in diamonds, and that is the point. When you need to establish an “aluminum bridge” to someplace like the Persian Gulf, there is no value you can place on such a capability.

  Much of the C-17’s advanced technology is found in its wing, so let’s begin our examination of this remarkable aircraft there. The wing is mounted well forward, and very high; in fact it actually humps up above the top of the fuselage, to increase the headroom in the cargo compartment. The wings droop downward from root to tip, something engineers call an “anhedral.” The pointed wing tips bend up sharply to form “Whitcomb winglets,” named for the NASA aerodynamicist who invented them. These cute little bits of aerodynamic design improve the flow of air at the wing tips, where drag-increasing vortexes arise at certain speeds. The net effect of the winglets is to reduce drag by 4 to 6 percent (and therefore raise fuel efficiency), which more than compensates for the added weight. The engine pylons thrust aggressively forward, so much so that each engine extends right beyond the leading edge of the wing. But from below, the most striking features of the wing are four pods that extend past the trailing edge. These are called flap support fairings, and they contain the complex hydraulic actuators, levers, and linkages that give the C-17 control of its externally blown flaps. The wing is “wet,” with most of the aircraft’s 27, 108 gallons/102,614 liters stowed in self-sealing fuel tanks built into the thick wing structure. There are extensive fire detection and suppression provisions in the wing, including an onboard inert gas-generating system, which extracts nitrogen from engine bleed air and uses it to pressurize the empty space in the fuel tanks as fuel is consumed, to prevent the formation of potentially explosive vapors.

  The engines on the production C-17s are Pratt and Whitney F-117 two-shaft, high-bypass turbofans rated at 40,700 lb/18,500 kg of thrust. The engine is based on the mature and reliable PW2000 series flying since 1984 on the Boeing 757. On the C-17, however, the engine core and the large fan section are both fitted with exceptionally powerful thrust reversers, which can be operated either in flight or on the ground. On the ground, thrust reversers work together with the wheel brakes and the spoilers on the upper surface of the wing, making it possible to land safely on short runways that previously would only have been used by a C-130. In fact, the C-17 is the only jet transport that can actually back up while taxiing. This is extremely important on small, crowded airfields, where there may be no space to turn around. As a point of reference, you can operate something like nine C-17s on a ramp where only three C-5s will fit.

  Along each side of the fuselage is a large canoe-shaped fairing, which is where the main landing gear is located. Given the troubles that Lockheed had with the C-5 landing gear, you’d better believe that Douglas made sure that they got the C-17’s landing gear system right. The shock absorbers are able to handle a sink rate upon landing of up to 15 feet/4.57 meters per second at full load. The steerable twin-wheel nose gear retracts aft, but the main gear on each side consists of two tandem three-wheel units, with big low-pressure tires for landing on soft ground. When raised, the main landing gear struts are rotated through 90 degrees by a clever arrangement of levers, pivots, and actuators before retracting into streamlined fairings. If hydraulic power is lost, the landing gear can still be deployed by gravity, free-falling and locking into place.

  Like the C-130, the C-17 has an auxiliary power unit (APU) located in the landing gear fairing on the port one side. The Garrett GTCP331 is a compact gas turbine that can drive the aircraft’s electrical generators and hydraulic pumps on the ground without having to start the main engines. The APU can also provide power to start the engines, even under the worst arctic conditions, and there are powerful NiCa
d batteries to start the APU or provide emergency DC power to the aircraft’s systems.

  The fuselage is 159 feet/48.5 meters long, measured from the nose to the tip of the tail cone, but the swept-back vertical stabilizer overhangs another 15 feet/4.57 meters. The tail of the C-17 incorporates a powerful two-section rudder. The top of the tail fin is just over 55 feet/16.8 meters above the ground, and there is a narrow internal passageway with a ladder so that maintenance crews can easily reach the hydraulic actuators and antennas, and even change the bulbs on the navigation lights. Empty weight of the C-17 is about 269,000 lb/122,000 kg. Overall, about 70 percent of the C-17’s structure, by weight, is aluminum alloy, 12 percent steel, 10 percent titanium, and 8 percent composites. There are two entry doors, the one on the left side with fold-down stairs, jump doors just aft of the wing on both sides, and the large loading ramp aft. Heading up one of the nose doors takes you directly into the cargo compartment. If you head forward, past the small galley and lavatory, and up a small staircase, you find yourself on the flight deck.

  The flight deck provides side-by-side seating for the pilot and copilot, seats for two observers or a spare crew, two rear-facing courier seats, and two comfortable rest bunks. The seats are extremely comfortable (I love the sheepskin covers!), and the cockpit has the best layout I have ever seen. The flight controls are more like that of a fighter plane than a commercial airliner. The pilots control the C-17 with a stick-mounted handgrip (as opposed to a control wheel), heads-up display, and a console full of color multi-function display (MFD) panels, much like the new C-130J. The flight controls are based on a quad-redundant fly-by-wire system, with the same kind of FADEC engine controls that will soon appear on the C-130J. Between the two crew seats is a pedestal loaded with the flight management systems, as well as the controls for the radio systems. Further controls for the various flight systems are contained in a strip that runs across the top of the main instrument panel. There even is an electronic warfare suite, which includes a radar warning receiver, as well as controls for the onboard ALE- 40/47 decoy/flare/chaff launchers. Though all of this gives the C-17 cockpit a look like that of the Starship Enterprise, it is amazingly easy to understand and operate.