© Wikimedia CommonsDavis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona
New cargo planes on order for the U.S. Air Force are being delivered straight into storage in the Arizona desert because the military has no use for them, a
Dayton Daily News investigation found.
A dozen nearly new C-27J Spartans from Ohio and elsewhere have already been taken out of service and shipped to the so-called boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. Five more are expected to be built by April 2014, all of which are headed to the boneyard unless another use for them is found.
The Air Force has spent $567 million on 21 C-27J aircraft since 2007, according to purchasing officials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Sixteen had been delivered by the end of September.
The Air Force almost had to buy more of the planes against its will, the newspaper found. A solicitation issued from Wright-Patterson in May sought vendors to build more C-27Js, citing Congressional language requiring the military to spend money budgeted for the planes, despite Pentagon protests.
Congress put the brakes on the expenditure, which was the right thing to do according to government watchers such as Mike O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute. He said the planned additional purchase would have been "simply wasting precious taxpayer money."
The military initally wanted the C-27J because it had unique capabilities, such as the ability to take off and land on less developed runways, according to Ethan Rosenkranz, national security analyst at the Project on Government Oversight. But when sequestration hit, the military realized the planes weren't a necessity, but instead a luxury it couldn't afford, he said.
"When they start discarding these programs, it's wasteful," he said.
O'Hanlon said their near-resurrection was largely due to parochialism.
"It's too bad, and a waste," he said. "I'm not sure the program was ever a white elephant, and yet given budget cuts I'm not sure it should be saved now."