The US Army hopes to select a winner for the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) competition in February and buy its first two aircraft in fiscal year 2007, despite a funding conundrum caused by the US Congress. The committees controlling the defence budget put the money for JCA into two different accounts - the authorisers into the US Army's budget and appropriators into the US Air Force's - jeopardising army leadership of the programme.
"I have not seen a situation like this. We will have to resolve where the money resides within the Department of Defense," says the army's programme executive officer aviation Paul Bogosian. It plans to continue evaluating the Alenia Aeronautica C-27J Spartan and EADS Casa C-295, he says: "We are still conducting the source selection, and the air force is participating."
The project is one of seven major army aviation programmes using funds from the Boeing/Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche's cancellation. "We were given three years to get them under way - that's the end of February 2007," says Bogosian. "They are all done with the exception of JCA and we hope to have JCA under contract by then, or close to it."
Source: Flight International
