Air Force strives to cope with delayed tanker lease.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold

U.S. Air Force officials are struggling to figure out how to proceed in the aftermath of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's decision to postpone a controversial plan to lease 100 Boeing KC-767A tanker transport aircraft as replacements for its aging KC-135 Stratotankers.

The Air Force had planned to begin leasing the KC-767As in 2006. Rumsfeld, however, announced in May that he would defer a decision on the plan until additional reports--an analysis of alternatives and a mobility capability study--are completed. He directed that those studies be completed by November.

Also, the Air Force's Fleet Viability Board is assessing the condition of the KC-135s, according to officials at the Air Mobility Command, which is part of the U.S. Transportation Command, headquartered at Scott Air Force Base, Ill. The board will report its findings to senior leadership within the next few months, officials said.

The service is eager to begin replacing the KC-135s, which have an average age of more than 44.3 years, making them the oldest combat weapon system in the Air Force inventory, Col. Marshall Sabol, AMC's deputy director for plans and programs, told National Defense. "Most people think the B-52 is our oldest aircraft. But it's the KC-135," he said.

"We're talking about an airplane that was built between 1959 and 1964," added Brig. Gen. Paul J. Selva, commander of the AMC's Tanker Airlift Control Center. During that period, Boeing built 732 KC-135s, which are a version of the Boeing 707 passenger plane. About 550 remain in service.

The KC-135s were built at rates of 75 to 100 per year, Sabol said. Aircraft construction has become so expensive that "we can't do that today," he said. "If we built 15 a year, that would be an aggressive program, really."

At that rate, Selva said, it would take 30 to 40 years to recapitalize the fleet. The oldest KC-135s then would be 80 to 90 years old. "Asking a pilot to fly an aircraft that old would be like going to war today with an airplane built by the Wright Brothers."

To jumpstart the recapitalization process, the Air Force in July 2003 sent Congress a proposal to lease--not buy--100 KC-767As from the Boeing Co., headquartered in Chicago, Ill. The contracted lease price per aircraft was $138 million in 2002 dollars, or a total of $16.6 billion, according to Marvin R. Sambur, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition.

Under the lease, he told Pentagon reporters, the new tankers would be delivered five years sooner than under a traditional procurement plan. The contract includes a provision for the Air...