The Air Force must start buying new tankers now since it will take decades to replace its aging KC-135 Stratotankers, the Air Force secretary said last month.
But Air Force Secretary Michael W Wynne said the service can't buy its next fleet of tankers-as yet to be determined-any faster than the Air Force bought them in the 1950s and 1960s.
"We want it as soon as possible," he told a roundtable discussion group at the Air Force Association's 2006 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition in Washington, D.C., Sept. 26. "There is no interest here in any kind of delay," he said.
The same day the secretary made that statement, and a day after the Air Force put out a draft request for bids on a new tanker, the Boeing Company announced it had the aircraft the Air Force needs-its 777 commercial airliner.
However, the service doesn't suggest who the manufacturer should be. Lt. Gen. Donald J. Hoffman, military deputy for Air Force acquisition, said as much in February testimony before the House Armed Services subcommittee on projection forces.
"It should be a new aircraft, a commercial derivative, and I think we ought to buy one kind," he said. "The first 100 [should] all look the same."
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley said purchasing new tankers continues to be a top priority.
"The single point failure for everything we do-global strike, globalized air bridges, global mobility-is the jet tanker," General Moseley said.
© 2006 National Guard Association of the United States Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Source: National Guard
