Northrop Grumman received $45 million to overhaul 10 engines in the KC-10 Extender fleet, the Pentagon announced Tuesday. An additional $17.7 million was awarded to the company in a separate contract for KC-10 logistics support. Work on both contracts will be completed by the end of 2018. The Air Force expects the KC-10 to fly into the 2040s. The strategy for a replacement tanker fleet for both the Extender and the KC-135 Stratotanker, originally planned as a new three-tanker force, has recently been up in the air as the Air Force looks to replace its tanker fleet more quickly without falling behind the curve of new technical developments. (See also: Shifting Futures from the Nov. 2016 issue of Air Force Magazine)
The future U.S. bomber force could provide a way for the Pentagon to simultaneously deter conflict with peer adversaries in two geographically disparate theaters, said Mark Gunzinger, the director of future concepts and capability assessments at AFA's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during a March 21 event. But doing so…