The U.S. Army's requirements for the Future Cargo Aircraft (FCA) will be completed within the next few months by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council and a request for proposals (RFP) is expected in 2006, with an award in 2007, an Army aviation official told The DAILY.

The Army plans to procure the FCA to replace 43 C-23 Sherpa intra-theater fixed-wing support aircraft, but eventually would like to buy 128 FCAs. The Sherpas will be retired from the fleet from 2007 through 2013, he said.

The need for a new aircraft with longer range and more payload capability has been made even more urgent with the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, the source said. In those operations, the Defense Department has been using CH-47 Chinooks - designed to move combat troops, equipment and ammunition to the battlefield - to resupply Army units over long hauls, the source said.

"Current C-23s are nonpressurized, which mean they can't go that high, and have limited cargo capability," he said. "They can only fly 400 miles and carry 7,000 pounds, which is insufficient. They have difficulty in performing all missions. For example, in Afghanistan, they can't fly over mountains, so we just don't use them for this."

"Current C-23s and C-12s are not capable of meeting combat logistical mission requirements from intermediate staging base to forward support base," Paul Bogosian, deputy program executive officer for Army aviation, said at an Insitute for Defense and Government Advancement conference on Nov. 9 (DAILY, Nov. 10).

The Chinook can carry 16,000-18,000 pounds and has a range of 150 miles.

"We'll need something in the range of the Chinook's payload capacity," the Army official said. "Right now we have to fly two Sherpas to carry the payload of one Chinook.

"The current aircraft also aren't as interoperable as they should be," he said. "We have to take a pallet off an Air Force C-130 and break it down to two parts to put on two Sherpas. Then we have to put the pallet back together to put it on a CH-47. With the FCA, we won't have to do this."

Requirements

The Army knows it wants to buy a commercially available, pressurized aircraft that can carry standard pallets, require low maintenance, and be able to land on unimproved surfaces. The Army expects the FCA will be a two-engine aircraft, the Army source said.

The primary mission of the FCA will be intra-theater support for priority cargo; a secondary mission will be homeland defense. The Air Force also is considering procurement of the FCA.

Initial funding for program startup is slotted for $4.9 million in 2006. The Army will procure the first 45 FCAs from 2007 to 2011, after which time another decision will be made about whether to procure more aircraft, he said.