In an interview with Reuters news service, new Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said that the Air Force may want to re-engine some of its current KC-135 tanker force, so the number of new tankers the service might buy may be lower than anticipated. (The Air Force currently has some 500 KC-135s.) He told Reuters, “I don’t want to mislead manufacturers to believe that there’s going to be this massive buy, then at the end of the day you only buy 10.” The notion of re-engining old tankers is not new; it’s been done. The problem—as we have reported here and here—is that a new engine does nothing to solve the old airframe corrosion problems.
The use of a military counter-drone laser on the southwest border this week—which prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas—will be a “case study” on the complex web of authorities needed to employ such weapons near civilian areas and the consequences of agencies…
