Talk about an excess mileage charge. The Royal Air Force has
already logged 10,000 hours on its four leased Boeing C-17 transports,
delivered in 2001-a substantially higher usage rate than the USAF's.
Boeing not only hopes that the RAF will exercise its option to
buy the C-17s in 2008, but that the service's enthusiasm for the
aircraft will spread to other nations. "Most countries think
that the C-17 is too big," acknowledges Boeing airlift business
development director Chris Raymond. "They don't know how
to use that much capability."
The lease deal, which includes support by the USAF, has worked
well and has been crucial to the RAF experience. "It would
have been un-doable if the UK had needed to stand up an entire
infrastructure for four airplanes," says Raymond. UK C-17s
have been used to carry replacement Tornado fighters from the
UK to the Falkland Islands, as well as carrying the equivalent
of four C-130 loads to Afghanistan.
By mid-May Boeing had delivered 103 out of 180 C-17s on firm order
from the USAF. In Afghanistan and Iraq the C-17 has defied the
critics who expected that such a large aircraft would be a strictly
strategic asset, by flying routinely into unprepared airstrips
at night and performing its first combat airdrop. On March 26,
15 C-17s took 1,000 soldiers and their equipment from Aviano AB
in Italy to Bashur airfield in Northern Iraq-bypassing bases closed
to the U.S. by Turkey. "Without the C-17, there wouldn't
have been a northern front," Raymond comments.
Iraq also saw the combat debut of the Special Operations Low Level
II (SOLL II) C-17. "In the last couple of years it's been
used like a C-17," says Raymond, "a theater aircraft
with strategic range." That, he says, has generated "a
lot of momentum" for a third multi-year procurement of C-17s,
adding 42 airplanes to the production run. The USAF is assessing
whether to buy more C-17s or whether to use the same funds to
re-engine its oldest C-5As.
