It was a hot July day when a handful of witnesses noticed an airplane struggling to maintain altitude over a Mississippi Delta soybean field.
The Marine Corps KC-130 aircraft spiraled to the ground, killing all 16 servicemen on board, joining a list of nearly two dozen military aircraft accidents in 2017.
According to a recent report by Fox News following yet another military aircraft incident this month, the number of accidental crashes and deaths involving military aircraft have skyrocketed in 2017.
Currently, the death toll stands at 37, up 130 percent over the same number killed at this point in 2016, the report said.
The overall number of crashes is up too at 22, a 38 percent rise over last year.
Many lawmakers are attributing this rise in crashes and fatalities to years of budget cuts they say have left some parts of the military behind and unequipped for training exercises and routine cross-country flights like the one that crashed on the Sunflower/Leflore County Line in July.
Mississippi’s lawmakers are chief among those.
“Our troops need stable and predictable funding to defend our country,” said Mississippi U.S. Senator Roger Wicker. “Years of defense budget cuts have contributed to the rise in accidents and mishaps across the military. Training hours are down. Maintenance has been delayed and deferred. I am working with my colleagues to produce a larger and more stable defense budget that meets the increasingly dangerous threats we face.”
Senator Thad Cochran, who chairs the Subcommittee on Defense said this is an issue his office has been vocal on and is looking to change through more funding for the military in 2018.
“Senator Cochran has been troubled and saddened by the accidents involving U.S. military vehicles which take the lives of service members,” a statement to the E-T from Cochran’s office said. “As he has stated repeatedly this year, the administration and Congress must reach a budget agreement to address the mandatory drawdown in defense and nondefense expenditures required by the Budget Control Act. Providing the resources needed by the U.S. military is incumbent on that agreement and Senator Cochran remains committed to reaching such a pact as soon as possible.”
According to the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations website, the recommendation from the committee for military funding in 2018 provides $581.3B in base Department of Defense funding, an increase of $15.4B from the President’s recommendation.
“This proposal recommends funding for programs necessary to protect U.S. national security interests,” Cochran said in a statement. “However, we still require a budget agreement to establish a top-line funding level for national defense spending.”
Below is a full list of what the committee’s current recommendation is on aircraft procurement from the committee’s website.
Aircraft Procurement – The bill addresses several unfunded requirements across the services through the procurement of multiple air frames, including the following funding not requested in the President’s budget:
• $1.0 billion for four F-35 carrier variant and four F-35 vertical take-off Joint Strike Fighters (Navy & Marine Corps)
• $800 million for eight MC-130J aircraft (Special Operations Command)
• $739 million for 10 F-18 Super Hornet aircraft (Navy)
• $495 million for six V-22 helicopters (Marine Corps & Navy)
• $400 million for eight MH-60R helicopters (Navy)
• $343 million for four KC-130J tanker aircraft (Marine Corps)
• $309 million for nine AH-64E Apache helicopters (Army)
• $250 million for two CH-53K King Stallion helicopters (Marine Corps)
• $247 million for four CH-47G Chinook helicopters (Special Operations Command)
• $108 million for eight UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters (Army National Guard)
• $100 million for one HC-130J aircraft (Air Force)
• $90 million for 11 UH-72 Lakota helicopters (Army)
• $35 million for Compass Call modifications (Air Force)
