The Boxer airlift command

B.A. Patty:

California's Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer is not much of a pragmatist when it comes to the U.S. military. She consistently voted to end the war in Iraq long before the outcome was at all certain, supporting numerous measures to put rigid timelines for withdrawal of our troops in place regardless of conditions on the ground. She tried to thwart President Obama's attempts to win the war in Afghanistan, opposing his efforts to put enough troops in the theater to accomplish the job. She famously berated a general who had the temerity to fail address her as "Senator," instead following common military protocol and calling her "Ma'am."

But there is one area where she has developed an affinity for the military and wants to ensure it has all the equipment she thinks it needs, and that is military air transport. She is a firm supporter of building as many Boeing C-17 Globemaster aircraft as she can get funded.

Given her proclivity for opposing any deployments of our forces, one wonders how she thinks the military should use them. In addition, the military leadership has made it abundantly clear that it doesn't want any more C-17s. It is a fine aircraft, but it is not capable of carrying large armored vehicles, nor is it small enough to land at some of the airstrips in the isolated areas where our troops operate. In addition, the C-5M modernization program run by Lockheed Martin is capable of providing the kind of heavy-lift capability the military needs.

...

There are few people more arrogant and ignorant than Sen. Boxer, but in this case she is wasting defense dollars on equipment that is not needed. It looks like another way for her to undermine the war effort.