One simple answer .... the companies would go bankrupt!!!

Only the government can afford to fly airplanes with 33% / 66% departure reliability (C-5A /C-5B). The C-17 is better -- but not much.

FATTY

 

I'm not an expert here, but if these models were transferred to the civilian sector wouldn't they be a bit more reliable? I'm pretty sure they get rode hard and put up wet in the Air Force... Thus the ungodly maintenance required and unreliability...

 

What you never heard of the BC-17 We were looking into getting some about 3 years ago. The military didn't have enough money for all the C-17 they wanted. They floated the BC-17 idea arround the AMC carriers. It amounted to a demilitarized C-17 with an aux tank. The military was going to support the program by alowing us to use their sim and borrow/buy parts to keep them in the air. The military was also was going to buy most of the block hours, with the carrier only having to fill arround 20% of the block hours.

The program ran aground over questions of limiting the civilian area of operations due to security and who was going to shoulder the certification costs. The final nail was when the military got the money for more C-17's.

This is not a joke. The program was described in AWST.

 

I could look it up, but just in case anyone else is curious...

Why can you get a L300 type but not a L500? Is it because there's that NASA bird sitting at Moffett that is a civilian version of the 141, but nothing similar for the C5?

What does being a FAR 25 A/C do for anyone?

Which other countries have actually bought Barnies? Last I knew, the Brits were leasing 4.

Would the training that the military would be providing for civilians happen at Altus? Perhaps that is the reason nobody wanted to fly them.

Thanks

 

IIRC, The RAAF (Australians), RCAF (Canada), and NATO were "supposed" to be getting them. I saw a photo of the Aussie bird's tail a while back. But us and the Brits are the only countries flying them.

 

With that being the case, can the C-17 be considered a truly strategic airlifter? Or is it considered tactical?

 

LOL...hopefully the AMP/RERP programs will change that.

 

The C-141 w/ modern engines might have worked if the tooling existed, IF it could be certified, and IF the floor loading was ever needed. The Russians do haul outsize cargo w/ their copies of the C-141 and C-5, but who knows what scheme they fund under...

The C-5 is too big, even if reliable, and too unique, I think. 36 pallets vs. the 42 they get in a 747 wouldn't seem to begin to make sense to commercialize the beast, even w/ the C-5M engines.

The C-17 burns too much fuel, period. It's got too much cross section for it's length to be a jack of all trades. Take for instance I've been told by tanker guys that we push the KC-135 around more in A/R than the C-5 does. Folks knock it, but the Army and Marines sure liked it post 9/11. To land short from a backside/powered lift approach there are features that impact it's #/nm of fuel burn. It's pretty reliable, has compliant avionics, usually, yada yada. Yes, I fly one and this is an over-generalization. Ride it hard, put it up muddy and dirty like your first 4x4. Mx loves when we go to the dirt/gravel/grapefruits about as much as the C-5 guys love us in general... Can't blame 'em, we're too much like a big C-130, sleeping in tents/doublewides instead of multi-star hotels, lowering the bar....

 

Tactical, yes -- a very good one too. Strategic, not really.

With a payload of 169,000 pounds (76,657 kilograms) and an initial cruise altitude of 28,000 feet (8,534 meters), , the C-17 has an unrefueled range of approximately 2,400 nautical miles. Its cruise speed is approximately 450 knots (.76 Mach). To compare, a KC-10 which is essentially a DC-10-30CF, was designed in the late 60s early 70s. The KC-10 can transport up to 75 people and nearly 170,000 pounds (76,560 kilograms) of cargo a distance of about 4,400 miles (7,040 kilometers) unrefueled.

In other words, the KC-10 (DC-10), an airplane created 2 decades or so prior to the C-17, moves as much cargo (palletized) twice as far and does it flying .82M instead of .76M.


Source http://www.af.mil/factsheets/

-FATTY

 

Thread Hijack for a minute, but I'll keep it saucy...

W/O requoting the af.mil facts- which are bit too black and white/dry in comparing the KC-10 to a C-17. Folks can't jump out of a KC-10, which drove a lot of the C-17 design and funding. I know the guys that got the KC-10 from idea to paper to greenbacks to the line in SAC. BUT....taking the 82nd Abn 1/2 way around the world and watching them shuffle and hop is strategic, even if it's more of a design goal and very occasional deal rather than something we do everyday. Trying to move 18 pallets w/ the same aircraft that does airdrops and short landings suffers in the fuel bill arena.

The KC-10 needs downloading equipment the C-17 or other transporters deliver, at least at the start of an operation/opening a port- if you don't recall, ask about the mid-90's ORI debacle out at Roswell from WRI.

The KC-10 is also a jack of all trades when the ports can handle the distance up to the cargo deck, if the porters are gentle w/ the insides. Over the years it has made up for T-Tail shortages, and the crews have maintained a bit more of the "Gucci" lifestyle than the T-tails.

The C-17 does its 18 pallets down in about 10 minutes in the AOR. I've offloaded 8 vehicles and been airborne in the AOR in under 20 minutes, and I won't tell here to just how fast it really was! Strategic and Tactical Blur, just keeping passing us the gas!