Global military sales have local impact | The Telegraph

Boeing aircraft workers in the midstate are about to make part of their living from the people of India.

Announced as part of President Barack Obama’s trip to Asia last weekend, a $4.1 billion deal for 10 C-17 Globemaster III cargo aircraft, approved by Congress, is set to be signed by the nation of India, the U.S. and Boeing.

The Air Force contract for the C-17 is winding down over the next two years, with 204 of the cargo aircraft delivered, said Jerry Drelling, Boeing C-17 spokesman in Long Beach, Calif.

“Unless something changes, our work with the Air Force contract is set to close, and, of course, having other interested parties out there keeps the C-17 a viable product and people at work,” Drelling said last week.

Foreign military sales provides work for more than 1,500 people in Macon and Warner Robins across several major defense programs.

Boeing’s Macon plant manufactures aircraft parts for many aircraft sold outside the United States, and at Robins Air Force Base, the U.S. Air Force manages advanced avionics programs, along with F-15, C-17 and C-130 aircraft sales to 61 nations.

When finalized, the India deal would keep the C-17 production line open for at least another year and keep more than 600 people working at Boeing’s Macon plant, near the Middle Georgia Regional Airport.

That’s just over $200 million in C-17 payroll and other spending spread across Middle Georgia by Boeing each year, according to company figures.

For plant manager Al Stewart, that means Boeing’s skilled labor force stays together making the cargo plane parts.

“While we don’t make ‘X’ aircraft for ‘X’ country in Macon, what we do is fabricate the parts. We make a lot of the pieces that make the C-17 — body fuselage parts, ramps and doors,” Stewart said. “Those are shipped off to become a final aircraft. When the Air Force or another nation buys the C-17, it keeps us going.”

And what a plant manager never wants to see is a viable production line shut down. That means the machines and skilled labor — those people who know from years of experience just how to machine a part or torque a screw — would be gone, Stewart said.

“If you shut down a (production) line and then all of a sudden need it or have to start it back up, then that’s a huge expense. Depending on the equipment situation and people, then it could be impossible.”

The Macon plant produces parts for the U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter, some of which are being sold to nations in the Middle East and Asia, “but the main production of the Macon plant is the C-17,” said Drelling, from the Boeing Long Beach, Calif., plant, where the final assembly work is completed to produce a C-17 cargo plane.

Robins consults with other nations and manages logistics and maintenance contracts for the weapons programs, said Debbie McDonald, a foreign military sales manager on base.

“It’s a large part of what we do here,” McDonald said. “There are about 440 people who work this full time on a daily basis here at Robins alone.”

For U.S. Air Force Reserve Master Sgt. John Dycus, a flight engineer with the 339th Flight Test Squadron at Robins, his job supporting foreign military sales customers is like being a librarian of the C-130, an aircraft design that dates to the mid-1950s.

Dycus is qualified to go over most of the systems in several of the C-130 variants.

“As we move on to newer C-130s, and other aircraft, there is still life left in the older ones,” Dycus said Friday. “However, there aren’t people qualified to work or understand some of the older systems. Some of the aircraft aren’t configured the same way any longer with avionics or fuel systems. I’m one of the few people who have learned a number of these and am qualified to fly on C-130s.”

When the need arises, Dycus is called on to work on international training programs to get foreign military members trained on the older C-130 cargo aircraft.

“It’s rewarding. I get to use my knowledge to help people. That’s always great, and it’s good to pass that knowledge along,” Dycus said.

A foreign nation can’t just knock on a defense contractor’s door and ask to take a new fighter jet out for a test spin.

Here’s how a deal works: A nation has to request formally a purchase of weapons from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which manages the foreign military sales, or FMS, programs for the Pentagon.

That agency notifies the U.S. Congress, which must approve the sale.

Then there is a negotiation phase, during which the final purchase prices and delivery schedule is set. That’s where the U.S.-India C-17 deal is now.

“It is a lengthy process. There’s a lot of negotiation ongoing from Congress. An agreement that starts today could take up to two years to complete, and another few years to deliver. It isn’t a situation where you pick out today and receive delivery in a month,” said Richard Aboulafia, an international arms expert with the Teal Group think tank in Washington, which monitors the arms trade daily.

Across the American defense industry, foreign arms sales in 2010 generated $31.6 billion. Israel was top of the customer list, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, with $4 billion in arms purchases, and Egypt came in second at $2.6 billion.

Saudi Arabia has asked the U.S. government to sell 84 F-15 fighters along with guided missiles, bombs and spare parts. It is a roughly $30 billion deal.

Aboulafia said the proposed sale isn’t “a situation where the United States is calling in a chit for a favor. I don’t see that. It’s more like the European defense market is collapsing and they know the F-15 is a good product, and the U.S. will be around to service it over the next two decades.”

The sales driver is a fear of Iran and that nation’s military modernization programs, Aboulafia said.

“It’s Iran and Yemen and whatever else might pop up out there in an unstable region,” he said. “The United States isn’t going to be around forever to keep things calm, and Saudi Arabia knows that.”

To keep the aircraft functioning, Robins manages the contracts and provides advice on the weapons systems of the F-15 to five nations, said Air Force Lt. Col. Jay Schatz, chief of the F-15 foreign military sales branch at Robins.

Nations that keep permanent offices at Robins for F-15 sales are: Israel, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. Singapore also uses the F-15, but has a different agreement, Schatz said, and does not maintain an office at Robins.

F-15 fighters for Japan are built on the island nation “and they manage a good part of their own logistics,” Schatz said.

Saudi Arabia is one of the largest current customers, Schatz said.

“Saudi Arabia is different. We have much more of an active role with them, and managing their fleet, which is currently going through a major upgrade,” Schatz said. About 100 people at Robins work F-15 foreign sales, Schatz said, keeping contracts up to date and monitoring maintenance issues.

The volume of sales may seem large, and over the past decade foreign arms sales from the United States to other nations has gone from about $8 billion in 1998 to $31.6 billion during fiscal year 2010, which ended Sept. 30.

A large part of that is continuing global conflicts, and the uncertainty in the world since the end of the Cold War.

Part of it is the good workmanship of American defense contractors, Aboulafia said.

To contact writer Shelby G. Spires, call 744-4494.