A $16 million name change for JCA

After a year mired in controversy on the Hill and at the Pentagon, the Army and the Air Force have one more score to settle: how to designate the plane that will serve as the two services’ new Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA).

By Pentagon decree, the Air Force is the agency with the power to name and designate every aircraft in the military, including helicopters. U.S. military aircraft are given specific designations that identify their design and mission.

{mosads}In the case of the JCA, the Air Force’s designation could end up costing $16 million — the price of being methodical and following the alphabet.

Last June, the Army and the Air Force picked the C-27 J Spartan — a plane made by Alenia , a unit of Italy’s Finmeccanica conglomerate — to become the Joint Cargo Aircraft.

The joint program is led by the Army, which wanted to buy an aircraft already commercially available and keep the name that the contractor had given the plane. The Army hoped that decision would save money as well as headaches for the contractor, because all the existing technical and operational manuals would stay the same.

But the Air Force, including its chief of staff, Gen. Michael Moseley, has been calling the aircraft the C-27 B, including in Hill testimony. That has created some confusion in the marketplace, according to an industry source, because the plane is known around the world as the C-27 J Spartan.

The Air Force opted for that designation because it used to own C-27 A Spartans, also made by Alenia, until several years ago. The C-27 B would follow under alphabetical order.

It was the Air Force that years ago designated Alenia’s aircraft as the C-27 A Spartan, and the company has kept that name as a basis for its more modern commercially available aircraft.

While this decision is methodical, however, it may not be cheap. The cost to redo existing operating and technical manuals would come to about $16 million, or more than half the price of one Joint Cargo Aircraft.

For its part, the Army does not want to absorb the cost, for which it did not plan, and neither does the contractor. The Army requested more than 6 months ago that the plane be called the C-27 J. It is as yet unclear how the Air Force will proceed.

The Air Force did not comment by press time.

For now, the Air Force has not finalized its decision, but it continues to call the plane the C-27 B. The office of the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff is responsible for the assignment of mission design series and popular names, but it is the chief of staff who signs off on those names and designations.

The services often submit their suggestions on names, and the Air Force usually sides with those suggestions after it checks against the list of popular names.

Under current plans, the Army will operate 54 JCAs and the Air Force will handle 24. The first two JCAs are expected to roll off the assembly line by the fall. They will undergo extensive testing and evaluation before they join the first combat unit in 2010.

The first 16 Army JCAs will be fielded to Army National Guard units in Georgia, Oklahoma, Oregon and Alaska.

After a year in which Congress fought a battle over which service should own the JCA — a fixed-wing aircraft — the chiefs of staff of the Army and the Air Force for the first time sent a letter to defense committees last month indicating their support for the shared program.

“In the most recent Air Force-Army warfighter talks, we recommitted our services to the success of the C-27 program in its current format, on the current fielding timeline and in accordance with the current bed-down plan,” Gen. George Casey, the Army’s chief of staff, and Moseley wrote in the Feb. 27 letter. “Together, both services will work any roles and missions issues that may arise.”

They also indicated that the services would want to buy more than the current total of 75, but that they have to conduct additional analyses for more areas in which the JCA could be used.

Of notable interest may be that in their letter, the four-star generals only referred to the JCA as the C-27 — no B and no J.