The U.S. is hiring the Russians to deliver sensitive equipment and supplies to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Because the U.S. military doesn’t have enough of the highly dependable and amazingly versatile C-17 airlifters. To make matters worse, we have no credible plan to resolve this problem. The need for C-17s will continue to grow because each year older, less reliable and less capable C-5A airlifters — some of which are over 40 years old — are being retired from the fleet because they are beginning to fail.