Senate budget chief defends Air Force tanker leasing plan

Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said Wednesday that the Air Force has taken too much heat on the subject of acquiring new tanker aircraft, referring to efforts by Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to derail plans to replacing existing KC-135 tankers with leased Boeing KC-767s.

Critics of that plan say it would waste billions in taxpayer dollars. At a hearing of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee that he also chairs, Stevens told Air Force Secretary James Roche and Air Force Chief of Staff John Jumper that he is concerned the initial operational capability of the new aircraft will be delayed.

The Air Force's current plan to lease 20 Boeing aircraft and purchase as many as 80 through traditional procurement means was stalled earlier this year while a series of government reviews are completed. Roche said the Air Force would have had "something like 80 planes" available by 2010 under the original plan to lease all 100 Boeing aircraft. But today he told Stevens he expects the first aircraft to arrive in 2010, "so it'll be a few years after that before we have [initial operational capability]."

Said Stevens, "We must work for a result as we delay the [initial operational capability], and we engender the growth of foreign-constructed tankers to meet our needs." He was referring to the Airbus A330, a European wide-body jet that was eliminated early by the Air Force from competition against the Boeing KC-767.

Stevens added that procurement of foreign manufactured tankers "would have been a disservice to this country." Stevens said he hopes to resolve problems plaguing the Air Force's tanker plan, and attributed them to "a jurisdictional fight between members of the Senate."

Roche noted that while the current KC-767 plan is on hold, the Air Force has not rejected the plan to lease 20 and buy 80 of the Boeing aircraft.

In his opening statement, Roche said he was "in complete agreement with [Defense] Secretary Rumsfeld's desire to review the program and ensure that it is not tainted in any way."

Meanwhile, he said the service is programming money for the fiscal 2006 budget request to conduct a KC-X tanker replacement program. Roche noted that the average age of the Air Force's KC-135 tanker fleet is over 43 years. "Recapitalization of the KC-135 fleet of over 540 aerial refueling aircraft will clearly take years to complete," Roche said.