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Defense News
January 28, 2008
Pg. 1
Four Nations May Join To Buy, Maintain Aircraft
By Gayle S. Putrich
The U.S. Air Force is pushing a 20-year effort to help four Central American militaries pool resources to buy and maintain aircraft, allowing them to take over some missions now handled by U.S. forces.
Five years in planning, the Regional Aircraft Modernization Program (RAMP) would seek to help El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua fly their own counter-narcotics, law enforcement, anti-terror and search-and-rescue operations.
The Pentagon and the four partner nations would share the cost, with each partner’s contribution to be negotiated this spring. Air Force officials hope to settle timetables, amounts and key details by June.
Three Phases
In the program’s first, $56 million phase, each Central American partner would purchase four fixed-wing, medium-lift aircraft. Armed with light weapons and capable of short takeoffs and landings, these planes would handle command-and-control, firefighting, medical evacuation and intel-recon-surveillance missions.
The amount each partner will pay is under negotiation, but “the lion’s share will come from the U.S.,” said Lt. Col. Troy Hewgley, chief of the theater security operations division at Air Forces Southern, the primary air presence in the region.
The $96 million Phase II would equip each partner nation with four armed medium-lift helicopters — probably something along the lines of the Bell 212 Huey II — for ISR, hoists, medevacs and firefighting.
In Phase III, expected to cost $128 million, the countries would start looking at air sovereignty: four interceptor jets for each country.
In addition to money, the U.S. Air Force would provide five years of logistics support in each phase.
“We’re training the trainer,” Hewgley said. “After that five years of teaching them, they’ll be able to maintain these aircraft on their own.”
Shopping for Price
Some Central American nations are still flying aircraft given by the United States as long ago as 30 years, but these A-37s, C-130 A-models and Huey 1 helicopters are increasingly costly to maintain, said Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, who commands the 12th Air Force and Air Forces Southern.
“There is no disagreement by anyone that the Central American air forces need help,” Seip said at a Jan. 16 journalists’ roundtable in Washington. “We gifted them things back in the 1970s, and those aircraft are about to fall off of the face of the Earth.”
None of the partners can afford many new aircraft on their own. Guatemala’s 2008 defense budget is about $167.2 million, and that’s the largest of the partner nations. In 2005, El Salvador spent about $162 million on defense; Honduras, $53 million; and Nicaragua, $32 million.
Seip said the RAMP effort would keep costs down by buying new aircraft that require no development costs — for example, the Cessna Caravan flown by the fledgling Iraqi Air Force on reconnaissance missions. Whatever light attack plane Iraq chooses may become an option for the Central American nations as well, Seip said.
But high price tags rule out many otherwise suitable aircraft, such as the C-27J Spartan being purchased for the U.S. Joint Cargo Aircraft, Seip said.
“Very few of our partners in this area of responsibility could afford that,” he said. “That would eat their entire budget up.”
Shared maintenance will reduce each country’s burden as well. Instead of each nation maintaining its own costly maintenance systems, supply depots and training facilities, one country could be a training hub and another would host the regional maintenance center, he said.
“The ‘R’ is a big, important part of RAMP,” Seip said. “Regionalization is going to be key with this.”
As participants step up their own counter-narcotic, anti-terrorism or even firefighting air operations, it would relieve the United States of serving as a surrogate air force for the region, “something we really can’t keep doing,” Seip said.
Air Forces Southern gets by on $1 billion a year, which Seip called a shoestring budget compared with other areas of responsibility, pointing out that about $12 billion a month goes into the war effort in Iraq.
“We manage as best we can with the limited assets that we have,” he said.
Bruce Lemkin, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs, said the program would be worth the sizable increase in U.S. spending in the region.
“By assisting our friends in acquiring appropriate, interoperable airpower capabilities — capabilities that they cannot afford on their own — we will promote regional security and stability while multiplying and strengthening the sinews of the relationship between our Air Forces and our peoples,” said Lemkin, who is instrumental in the air force-to-air force negotiations.
Hewgley said a combined Pentagon and State Department effort to add funding for RAMP in fiscal 2008 was unsuccessful.
Air Forces Southern and its partners are mainly looking to Congress to fund the program in the annual budget, starting in fiscal 2009, but “any and all funding sources” are up for consideration at this point, Seip said.
The program could also get some support from the Merida Initiative, a 2007 Bush administration effort designed to foster security cooperation in the region. Once approved by Congress, the $550 million program — $500 for Mexico and $50 million for Central America in the first year — will grow into a multiyear, nontraditional foreign aid program for fighting drug trafficking, transnational crime and terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, with as much as $1.4 billion eventually available for grants.
Even if RAMP does not garner Merida funding in the first year, it would remain a potential source for future phases of the regionalization effort or further down the line.
“We want to prove success in the Block One countries, first,” Hewgley said. “But expansion throughout the region is something we have our eye on. This is our southern flank.”
He called regional cooperation a worthy investment for all involved. “We are working in concert with these nations to serve their interests and our interests,” he said.
Diplomats for the partner nations, called at their embassies in Washington, declined to comment, saying they preferred to wait until after a formal deal had been signed.
January 28, 2008
Pg. 1
Four Nations May Join To Buy, Maintain Aircraft
By Gayle S. Putrich
The U.S. Air Force is pushing a 20-year effort to help four Central American militaries pool resources to buy and maintain aircraft, allowing them to take over some missions now handled by U.S. forces.
Five years in planning, the Regional Aircraft Modernization Program (RAMP) would seek to help El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua fly their own counter-narcotics, law enforcement, anti-terror and search-and-rescue operations.
The Pentagon and the four partner nations would share the cost, with each partner’s contribution to be negotiated this spring. Air Force officials hope to settle timetables, amounts and key details by June.
Three Phases
In the program’s first, $56 million phase, each Central American partner would purchase four fixed-wing, medium-lift aircraft. Armed with light weapons and capable of short takeoffs and landings, these planes would handle command-and-control, firefighting, medical evacuation and intel-recon-surveillance missions.
The amount each partner will pay is under negotiation, but “the lion’s share will come from the U.S.,” said Lt. Col. Troy Hewgley, chief of the theater security operations division at Air Forces Southern, the primary air presence in the region.
The $96 million Phase II would equip each partner nation with four armed medium-lift helicopters — probably something along the lines of the Bell 212 Huey II — for ISR, hoists, medevacs and firefighting.
In Phase III, expected to cost $128 million, the countries would start looking at air sovereignty: four interceptor jets for each country.
In addition to money, the U.S. Air Force would provide five years of logistics support in each phase.
“We’re training the trainer,” Hewgley said. “After that five years of teaching them, they’ll be able to maintain these aircraft on their own.”
Shopping for Price
Some Central American nations are still flying aircraft given by the United States as long ago as 30 years, but these A-37s, C-130 A-models and Huey 1 helicopters are increasingly costly to maintain, said Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, who commands the 12th Air Force and Air Forces Southern.
“There is no disagreement by anyone that the Central American air forces need help,” Seip said at a Jan. 16 journalists’ roundtable in Washington. “We gifted them things back in the 1970s, and those aircraft are about to fall off of the face of the Earth.”
None of the partners can afford many new aircraft on their own. Guatemala’s 2008 defense budget is about $167.2 million, and that’s the largest of the partner nations. In 2005, El Salvador spent about $162 million on defense; Honduras, $53 million; and Nicaragua, $32 million.
Seip said the RAMP effort would keep costs down by buying new aircraft that require no development costs — for example, the Cessna Caravan flown by the fledgling Iraqi Air Force on reconnaissance missions. Whatever light attack plane Iraq chooses may become an option for the Central American nations as well, Seip said.
But high price tags rule out many otherwise suitable aircraft, such as the C-27J Spartan being purchased for the U.S. Joint Cargo Aircraft, Seip said.
“Very few of our partners in this area of responsibility could afford that,” he said. “That would eat their entire budget up.”
Shared maintenance will reduce each country’s burden as well. Instead of each nation maintaining its own costly maintenance systems, supply depots and training facilities, one country could be a training hub and another would host the regional maintenance center, he said.
“The ‘R’ is a big, important part of RAMP,” Seip said. “Regionalization is going to be key with this.”
As participants step up their own counter-narcotic, anti-terrorism or even firefighting air operations, it would relieve the United States of serving as a surrogate air force for the region, “something we really can’t keep doing,” Seip said.
Air Forces Southern gets by on $1 billion a year, which Seip called a shoestring budget compared with other areas of responsibility, pointing out that about $12 billion a month goes into the war effort in Iraq.
“We manage as best we can with the limited assets that we have,” he said.
Bruce Lemkin, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs, said the program would be worth the sizable increase in U.S. spending in the region.
“By assisting our friends in acquiring appropriate, interoperable airpower capabilities — capabilities that they cannot afford on their own — we will promote regional security and stability while multiplying and strengthening the sinews of the relationship between our Air Forces and our peoples,” said Lemkin, who is instrumental in the air force-to-air force negotiations.
Hewgley said a combined Pentagon and State Department effort to add funding for RAMP in fiscal 2008 was unsuccessful.
Air Forces Southern and its partners are mainly looking to Congress to fund the program in the annual budget, starting in fiscal 2009, but “any and all funding sources” are up for consideration at this point, Seip said.
The program could also get some support from the Merida Initiative, a 2007 Bush administration effort designed to foster security cooperation in the region. Once approved by Congress, the $550 million program — $500 for Mexico and $50 million for Central America in the first year — will grow into a multiyear, nontraditional foreign aid program for fighting drug trafficking, transnational crime and terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, with as much as $1.4 billion eventually available for grants.
Even if RAMP does not garner Merida funding in the first year, it would remain a potential source for future phases of the regionalization effort or further down the line.
“We want to prove success in the Block One countries, first,” Hewgley said. “But expansion throughout the region is something we have our eye on. This is our southern flank.”
He called regional cooperation a worthy investment for all involved. “We are working in concert with these nations to serve their interests and our interests,” he said.
Diplomats for the partner nations, called at their embassies in Washington, declined to comment, saying they preferred to wait until after a formal deal had been signed.