my BloG

Asap masih mengepul di puing pesawat Hercules TNI AU yang jatuh di Desa Geplak, Karas, Magetan, Jawa Timur, Rabu (20/5).

Indonesia’s military is likely to experience more deadly crashes like the one that killed 100 people this week unless the government boosts defense spending, analysts said Friday.



Investigators retrieved one of four engines from the C-130 Hercules that slammed into a residential neighborhood Wednesday.

They were sifting through the wreckage for other key parts that could help determine the cause. It was the third accident involving a military plane in just two months.

“The problem is money,” said Dudi Sudibyo, an aviation analyst, who said the military struggles to maintain its aging fleet and hold onto experienced pilots. “Sophisticated military equipment requires a huge budget for maintenance alone. What we have now is only enough to ensure the welfare of the troops.”

“We’re sitting on a time bomb here,” he said. “If the government doesn’t fix this, we’re going to see more and more deadly accidents.”

There were 112 people on the C-130, which was carrying troops and their families from the capital, Jakarta, to Indonesia’s easternmost province of Papua, home to a decades-long insurgency. It was making several stops along the way and was attempting to land at an air force base in East Java province when it slammed into a row of houses and then skidded 700 yards (meters), eventually landing in a rice field and bursting into flames.

At least 100 people were killed, including two villagers on the ground, Bambang Samoedra, commander of the base, said Friday. Fifteen others were injured, many with severe burns.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has long acknowledged that the budget for defense was too low: The military requested $12.7 billion for 2009, but only got $3.3 billion — $2.7 billion of which goes toward troop salaries and administration. But he insisted after the crash the shortfall affected only the ability to purchase new equipment, not maintain the old.

Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono was quick to disagree. “Ideally, the maintenance cost should be 20 percent to 25 percent of the overall military budget, but at present it’s below 10 percent,” he said, promising to ground all C-130s if it turned out the crash was the result of technical or mechanical failure.

Indonesia’s air force, long underfunded and handicapped by a recently lifted U.S. ban on weapons sales, has suffered a string of plane crashes. Twenty-four people were killed last month when a Fokker 27 crashed into an airport hangar during a training mission.

And just last week another C-130 lost its landing gear and slammed into a house, injuring four people. Bantarto Bandoro, a defense expert, said the government should learn from the latest tragedy. “If we don’t want to see similar accidents every month we need to increase funds for maintenance,” he said.

The air force has experienced an exodus of experienced transport pilots in recent years, as they sought to join the rapidly expanding network of low-cost commercial airlines formed after the industry was deregulated. The C-130s are the only aircraft in the Indonesian air force capable of transporting personnel and heavy military equipment as well as emergency relief in the event of an earthquake, tsunami or other disaster.

The air force has received more than 50 Hercules since the late 1950s, many secondhand and provided by Washington, until the U.S. started banning military deliveries in the 1990s because of violence carried out by Indonesian troops in East Timor.

The military complained that many of the planes quickly became unserviceable because of the lack of spare parts. Though the embargo was lifted four years ago, the air worthiness of many planes remained in question.