New MATS for Old

When the Defense Department created the Military Air Transport Service eight years ago, the Pentagon concluded hopefully that a consolidated airlift arm would end interservice transport duplication once and for all. It was a hollow hope, soon reverberating with echoes of Navy "logistic" transports and the Air Force's own private transports independently zooming off in all directions.

Last week Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson decided to try again, whipped off a directive placing MATS under a "single manager" (Air Force Secretary Donald Quarles), and at the same time increasing the present MATS aircraft strength from 534 to 717. New planes will come from the Navy (67) and three heavy troop-carrier wings (some 100 Globemaster null from the Air Force's Tactical Air Command. Thus MATS, whose M-day job hitherto was designed to support TAC and other airlift facilities, will now have the capacity to drop troops directly on target, as well as the job of performing peacetime transport duties.

The new order was not quite airtight: the Wilson directive permits the Navy to retain enough planes for "administrative" functions and assignment to the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and the Air Force to keep a few transport wings for strategic and tactical purposes. And so, in the time-honored way of stubborn service independence, the newly unified MATS will still have independent rivals--and it will doubtless remain for planners eight years hence to do something about it again.

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