Originally Posted by flybigjet
Oh, geez. Where to start?
To begin with, the jet's got the legs of a sparrow-- which is a BAD thing for an airlifter. In the airlift world, there are two types of transport: intertheater (operations between geographical combatant commands) and intratheater (operations exclusively within a geographical combatant command).
Basically, think of intertheater as flying from the US to Europe or Europe to the Middle East, and intratheater flying entirely within Europe or the Middle East. C-5's and C-17 are supposed to be mostly be intertheater birds and C-130's and the like are intratheater birds. Make sense?
In order to do this, the intertheater crowd is expected to self-support themselves when flying; tanker support will usually chop to a theater (i.e. refuel fighters and the like in the combat zone), so when the balloon goes up, the tankers aren't available to transport category aircraft. An intertheater airlifter is supposed to load up on cargo and gas and fly between continents all by themselves.
But the C-17 has VERY short legs. When I ran their stage operation in Germany years ago, in the winter with a headwind, they could NOT make it from Germany to the east coast without using a tanker or landing short for fuel-- they just didn't have the range. Eventually (around 2005+ iirc), the solution was to put an additional fuel bladder above the cargo box between the wings. That solved the range issue, but since you can either carry gas or cargo, the jet had the range to get there, but still couldn't carry much, if anything. Weight is weight.
The tanker crowd LOVES the jet as it provides a reason for their existence, even in peacetime. C-17 pilots get REALLY good at aerial refueling.
Additionally, it was originally designed to use a different cargo system than EVERY OTHER AIRLIFTER in the AF-- which meant they were going to have to transship cargo every time it changed jets. They eventually (sort of) fixed that, and it can now accept a standard 463L pallet.
Also? It's burn is pretty horrific for what it is-- probably similar to the C-5M now-- and a single C-5 can carry about 2.5 times what a C-17 can carry; i.e. for each two C-5 loads, you'd need to fly five loads in a C-17. The solution was to slow them way back to 0.74 Mach and install winglets to help with the fuel burn.
When it came out, it became the poster child for the Air Mobility Command-- pictures of it were EVERYWHERE-- we used to call it the "porn star of the AF".
Additionally, the C-17 program "cheated". Most of the captains and majors on the acquisition/test and development teams were colonels and generals by the time the C-17 was being purchased, and they used that to their advantage-- C-141 retirements were accelerated, and the C-5 was specifically made to look like it couldn't do any more than the C-17 could do. I was ordered (more than once) to do a fuel stop in the Azores when flying from Germany to the east coast-- because if the C-17 couldn't do it? Well, the C-5 must not (read: will not) be able to either. Additionally, when demonstrating the loading capability to a CODEL (Congressional Delegation), we were specifically directed NOT to drop the forward or aft ramps or open the nose, and were not allowed to kneel the jet to show how easy it was to load a C-5 (you can actually drive in one end and out the other). That way the "horseholders" leading the delegation could tell the congressmen/senators that the C-5 needed special loading equipment to get the cargo waaaaaaay up to the cargo box, whereas the C-17 could just drive on. COMPLETE lie.
Trivia: The official name is the Globemaster III. The unofficial name? Either Buddha (everyone sits around and worships it) or Barney-- Fred's short, fat friend. It helps to know that the C-5's nickname is Fred.
Also? It was designed by McDonnell Douglas, with all of the Bad that went with that. Douglas pretty much told the government that if they didn't buy the C-17, they'd go out of business. They did, and they did-- which is how it ended up being a Boeing product. Lockheed offered a C-5D with about 40% parts commonality, two-person crew, and a lighter footprint AND a -J model C-130 for each unit cost of the C-17. But, since they'd just gotten the F-22 contract, that wasn't going to happen. In fact, iirc, Lockheed was specifically directed to destroy all the C-5 tools and dies that were in storage so they couldn't make any more C-5's to compete against C-17 production.
R.
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