Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s written testimony for Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing contained the declaration, “The Air Force fleet is aging.” He added: “An aging fleet means increased maintenance costs and flight restrictions. It is important that we recapitalize the fleet to retain America’s air dominance and strategic flexibility.” Given the Secretary’s history of rebuffing most Air Force efforts to reinvigorate its old aircraft fleet, it’s hard to believe Rumsfeld is softening, but it’s possible. His latest budget doesn’t offer much in the way of concrete steps, however.
A new think tank analysis finds a hypothetical blended-wing body tanker could offer twice as much refueling performance as the KC-46A Pegasus and recommends the Air Force buy scores of them, as the service prepares to evaluate a BWB demonstrator next year and must juggle its future tanker plans with…