RPT-Argentina said to bar US transport during Bush tour
By Jim Wolf | 21 Mar 2007 | 03:52 PM
WASHINGTON - Argentina barred U.S. C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft from landing or overflying during a Latin American tour by President Bush for fear they would get stuck there, the secretary of the U.S. Air Force said on Wednesday.
"This is really a slap in the face to your America's air force," Michael Wynne, the service's top civilian, told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee weighing the air force's $110.7 billion fiscal 2008 budget request.
The C-5 fleet is built by Lockheed Martin Corp. , the Pentagon's biggest supplier. Designed to carry outsize and oversize cargo, it is one of the world's largest aircraft and the backbone of strategic airlift in every U.S. war from Vietnam through the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Bush toured Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico from March 8 to 14.
It was not immediately clear why Washington sought landing rights in Argentina as part of the trip. The C-5 is sometimes used to ferry bulletproof limousines and other heavy cargo during White House missions.
"Right now, we've had an incident where Argentina refused to have C-5s land in their territory because
the last time we landed C-5s there, they all broke and they could not leave," Wynne testified.
He said Argentina also turned down overflight rights for the giant transports in a diplomatic note to the U.S. embassy tied to Bush's Latin American tour.
Argentina's embassy in Washington did not return a telephone call seeking comment on Wynne's account. Thomas Greer, a spokesman for Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed, said the company would not comment on an operational issue or incident involving the C-5, which it is upgrading and modernizing.
Wynne used the C-5 tale to illustrate what he called the problem of "geriatric maintenance" of the air force's aging and increasingly unfit inventory of about 6,000 aircraft.
Many U.S. transport aircraft and aerial refueling tankers are more than 40 years old. The average age of the bomber force exceeds 30 years. The fighter force is the oldest it has ever been, averaging more than 18 years, according to an Air Force fiscal 2007 "posture statement" distributed at the hearing.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley, the service's top uniformed officer, has estimated his service may need as much as another $20 billion per year more for at least the coming five years to replace aging aircraft fast enough to keep unit costs affordable.
Moseley, testifying at Wynne's side, told the Appropriations subcommittee on defense he suspected the Air Force would need more "strategic airlift" to accommodate forces being added to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.
Subcommittee chairman Sen. Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, referred to Argentina's reported rebuff of the C-5 as "stunning news" suggesting the Air Force was increasingly decrepit.
Asked what he planned to do about this, Inouye told Reuters: "If we are going to send men out there to put their lives on the line, the least we can do is give them proper training and proper equipment.
Bueno, no encontré ninguna noticia donde se hable de incidente diplomático con Argentina, en todos lados dice casi lo mismo que la nota de Reuters y se habla del incidente para destacar el problema de confiabilidad de los Galaxy y la antigüedad de la flota de la USAF.
También dice que Cancillería sí contestó mediante una nota a la embajada de EEUU; lo que no se contestó fué una llamada que no devolvieron al periodista que consultó a nuestra embajada en Washington.
Resumiendo, EEUU consultó, Argentina contestó que no, porque la otra vez se les rompieron los aviones y ahora con el quilombo del radar, no podemos recibirlos ni a ganchos. Y después el B.A. Herald agarró pa'l lado del los tomates...
