Well, they're there if we need them

You cannot have everything in the military of a quasi-broke country not presently under direct attack. More hard decision are coming - and this one is defendable.

New cargo planes on order for the U.S. Air Force are being delivered straight into storage in the Arizona desert because the military has no use for them, a Dayton Daily News investigation found. A dozen nearly new C-27J Spartans have already been taken out of the US Air National Guard service and shipped to the so-called ‘boneyard’ at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. Five more are expected to be built by April 2014, all of which are headed to the boneyard unless another use for them is found.

The Air Force has spent $567 million on 21 C-27J aircraft since 2007, according to purchasing officials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Sixteen had been delivered by the end of September. The Air Force almost had to buy more of the planes against its will, the newspaper found. A solicitation issued from Wright-Patterson in May sought vendors to build more C-27Js, citing Congressional language requiring the military to spend money budgeted for the planes, despite Pentagon protests.

I actually like(d) the program and the aircraft does fit a niche ... but .... what a waste of new-aircraft-smell.

Maybe we will never need them - maybe we will at some point; the future is an imperfect unknown.

What we do know is that at least at DOD, serious and real cuts are here and more are on the way. Hunker down, take the risk, and pray the truth does not change again against you.