OK, nobody is forcing it on them, but they wanted the next generation of transport, not a complete change of mission. They had to swallow their objections and play ball.
That's not what the article says. The USAF is wanting the change as much as the Army is. If you read the article, the guy in charge - a
AIRLIFT guy, is stating that they've been trying to change the way they do things for years but it's taking time. Notice that not once since the C-17's entered service has it been used in the off-airport role it was designed for. It's done the same old airline missions that AMC/MAC/MATS has always done. The whole point of the CRAF is to free up AMC assets to deliver direct to the front line, yet those in charge (not the users, not the customers) continue to tie up assets doing things that other platforms can achieve just as well and usually at less cost.
You are forgetting that the primary customer of airlift is the Army, not the Air Force. Thus, in the real world, the Army, not the Air Force, defines what is needed as far as airlift assets and it is the responsibility for the Air Force to acquire the equipment to fulfill the
customer's need.
Now. In order to make the aircraft reasonably efficient, you have to have some capacity. That means not just weight, but size. In order to lift around 200,000 pounds of load, you're going to need a fuselage along the lines of a 130 to a 17 in size. How are they going to get something that size on a ship unless they plan to build new ships to land this thing.
I see nowhere the number "200,000 pounds" as part of the payload requirement. The C-130's nominal payload is 25,000 pounds and usually doesn't carry much more than 20,000 pounds. So what massive airlift asset are you trying to build when the user's specification doesn't even ask for something that big? They want to supplant/replace the C-130, not the C-17 or C-5. You are creating problems that don't exist Paul in an attempt to justify your dislike of the program. Still, let's solve your problem - you want to move 200,000 pounds to a carrier. Which is more efficient - 10 JCA's or 100 CH-47s? Simple - 10 JCA's. You don't have to do it all in one move. If you need to move 200,000 at once to a ship, then you do it via UNREP, not airlift.
All of these engineering problems are coming into play just so we can move cargo slightly faster that last 200 miles than we can today. You still have to download the stuff at your forward base, then either unpalletize it or keep it on the 463-L pallet system. Now you have to transfer it to another aircraft and move it forward? Then unload it again? We have to do that now, so what's it saving us?
Umm... I think you're still missing the whole point.
Here's the current chain -
1) C-5, C-17, or CRAF loads cargo at Dover and flies it to Kuwait.
2) Cargo is transloaded to C-130s and flown to a base in Iraq.
3) Cargo is unloaded from C-130s, trucked to a depot in a convoy (requiring a lot of protection).
4) Cargo is unpacked at the depot and most of it routed to a single FOB.
Here is the JCA chain -
1) C-5, C-17, or CRAF loads cargo at Dover and flies it to Kuwait.
2) Cargo is offloaded to depot at airport and sorted for distribution to each FOB.
3) Cargo is loaded to JCAs and flown direct to FOBs.
The point - you cut out the depots near the front line and the convoys needed to move cargo from the small airports to the depots on the outskirts of town.