More of an OLDS topic

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

Talk about wasting money...

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.

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/new-air-force-planes-parked-in-arizona-boneyard-1.245554

[Pooky 3,785]

Apparently, a number of them are being reassigned to the US Coast Guard, so some of them will get used.

The root cause of this problem is an inter-service spat between the US Army and the USAF. The army ordered them, the Air Force had a snit about the army flying fixed-wing aircraft and got them and their mission transferred to the USAF. Then they promptly parked them in Arizona, because they never really wanted them in the first place.

[GandD 5,966]

Makes sense.

[GandD 5,966]

I thought about this on the way to work. How is this not a bigger deal?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I thought about this on the way to work. How is this not a bigger deal?

Probably because it's business as usual.

[GandD 5,966]

I don't think they usually build planes and then send them to the bone yard to rot.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Well I'll give you a similar example - the MOD scrapped the UK's only frontline aircraft carrier. Two replacements are currently being built but won't be online until 2020 and one of those will be mothballed almost immediately.

It happens.

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

I thought about this on the way to work. How is this not a bigger deal?

I really don't know. If the military doesn't want them why not sell to private industry or foreign military instead of wasting all that aluminum?

[GandD 5,966]

And maybe, stop production?

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

And maybe, stop production?

Absolutely! (Unless they are making a profit on the sales, which I doubt)

[GandD 5,966]

That's what these stories always come down to. Someone doesn't want to lose what they have. The article talks about how cancelling programs the pentagon wants to cancel will cause too many jobs to be lost in ohio. So, they budget the money anyway just to keep people in jobs? I wonder how much that has to do with Ohio being a swing state?

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

I didn't know Ohio was full of swingers. Will hafta research that more.

[Karee 4,190]

Can't they sell them to some 3rd world ally like Canada or the UK?

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

Can't they sell them to some 3rd world ally like Canada or the UK?

[GandD 5,966]

Can't they sell them to some 3rd world ally like Canada or the UK?

Or to the public or anyone. Or stop making them.