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Schwartz not afraid of Army airlifters, UAVs

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force’s chief of staff, said Wednesday that he “is not threatened” by — and will resist bureaucratic battles against — other military services that field airlifters or unmanned aircraft, signaling a departure from his predecessor.

The Army and Air Force earlier this decade clashed over the ground service’s intention to field the eventual Joint Cargo Aircraft, as well as over which service should control certain unmanned aerial vehicles.

Schwartz’s predecessor, Gen. Michael Moseley, was a noted participant in the Washington tussles over those issues.

As for the medium-lift aircraft, Schwartz told a National Defense Industrial Association conference in Washington that he “is not threatened” by the Army operating them, “so long as we know where they are, what they are carrying and that we’re making use of excess capacity.

“I’m less worried about ownership” of kinds of planes “than I am about the end results,” Schwartz said. “This is a versatility issue, not an ownership issue.

“We have to get off of these theological debates,” he said.

Further, Schwartz said the Pentagon would prefer to work with officials in Kyrgyzstan to keep open the U.S. air base at Manas. Kyrgyz leaders announced earlier this month plans to close the base, prompting speculation that the Russian government is behind the decision.

As the Obama administration and military officials finalize a review that will shape a likely increase of the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, Schwartz said one thing all must work into new plans is how to move fuel and other supplies into the landlocked nation.

“There’s no doubt that Afghanistan is a logisticians’ war,” he said. And that means losing a so-called “lilypad base” like Manas — through which U.S. forces’ supplies can be moved from the U.S. to the battlefield — “would be a big deal,” Schwartz said.

But the Air Force leader sent a message to Kyrgyz officials: “It is not going to be Manas at any cost — there is a point where we’ll walk away.”

The Pentagon dispatched Air Force Gen. Duncan McNabb, chief of U.S. Transportation Command, to meet with officials in Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian nations in an attempt to build a wider logistics path into Afghanistan.