The Senate Armed Services Committee thinks the Air Force needs to reconsider its position on fee-for-service aerial refueling, seeing it as a low cost way to quickly replace capability provided by elderly KC-135 tankers. Roxana Tiron of The Hill reports that the committee report on the 2008 defense authorization bill, awaiting action in the full Senate, gives “strong directive language” to run a pilot program to demonstrate fee-for-service capability. The Navy already uses contract tanking from Omega Air, which expressed interest in competing for a share of the Air Force’s aerial refueling business. As early as 2002, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chief architect of the effort that killed the Boeing tanker lease deal and exposed the Darleen Druyun affair, wanted the service to consider the fee-for-service option. However, Air Force officials have maintained such an arrangement wouldn’t suit operational requirements. The final request for proposal for the KC-X tanker replacement program doesn’t consider fee-for-service.
The Space Force should take bold, decisive steps—and soon—to develop the capabilities and architecture needed to support more flexible, dynamic operations in orbit and counter Chinese aggression and technological progress, according to a new report from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
