Committee debates tanker lease plan

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  • By Master Sgt. Scott Elliott
  • Air Force Print News
WASHINGTON --  Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee do not question the Air Force’s need for new tankers, only how the service plans to get them.

Air Force Secretary Dr. James G. Roche met with the committee Sept. 4. He outlined the importance of immediately upgrading the service’s aging aerial refueling fleet by leasing 100 KC-767 tankers from Boeing Co. to replace the KC-135E Stratotankers.

Critics of the lease plan, such as Sen. John McCain, argue the leasing option is more costly to taxpayers. But proponent Sen. Pat Roberts urged committee members to look beyond the price tag.

“The proposed lease will allow the Air Force to begin modernizing its fleet five years earlier than a traditional procurement, and will save up to $5 billion in modifications planned to keep the KC-135E flying,” Roberts said.

It is the rising cost of KC-135E maintenance, coupled with ever-decreasing mission capability, that is the crux of the problem, Roche said.

“Our national-security strategy can not be executed without air-refueling tankers,” Roche said. “This dependence and the advanced age of the nation’s air-refueling aircraft fleet drive our urgency to recapitalize.”

Roche told the senators that “operational limitations” were so severe that the Air Force limited the aircraft’s deployed service to the European theater during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“They were unsuited for the high temperatures and short runways in the (OIF) operating area; they had insufficient fuel capacity, and less-efficient engines,” he said.

In the past 12 years, Roche said, the “E” model’s mission-capable rates are down 7 percent. In the same time period, programmed depot maintenance tripled, depot work packages doubled and depot flow-days more than doubled.

“The men and women who are keeping these planes flying are performing magnificently, but they are doing much more than our nation should reasonably expect of them,” Roche said.

While some models of the KC-135 had their operational lives extended by replacing engines, new engines would add only 20 percent to the KC-135E’s capability. The real problem with the E model, the secretary said, was age-related corrosion.

Roche described to the committee how serious corrosion damage could be by reminding them of a civil aircraft incident that led to a change in aircraft safety law. In 1988, a Hawaiian Airlines 737 was so weakened by corrosion that a portion of the cabin, just behind the cockpit, blew off in mid-flight.

Roche told senators the Departments of Defense and the Air Force considered both the financial and operational aspects of the deal before opting for the lease plan.

“The advantages in schedule and reduced impact to current budgeted programs … drove the leasing decision,” he said. “The Air Force and DOD selected leasing as the acquisition strategy primarily based on affordability, by reducing the near-term cost -- and minimizing the budgetary impact to our plans for getting accelerated capability of the new weapon system to our frontline troops.”

Under the lease option, the Air Force can field the new fleet of tankers more quickly than with a traditional-procurement plan.

“Jumpstarting replacement of the older, less-capable tankers enables faster modernization of air expeditionary forces,” Roche said. “The lease not only advances the first delivery by three years, it puts the 100-aircraft fleet at the disposal of our frontline commanders for combat operations by fiscal 2011 -- five years ahead of the planned purchase.”