My finance view

Watching the Air Force’s competition to replace the KC-135 has been an eye-opening experience. After 23 years in Strategic Air Command, operating both B-52s and KC-135s, I assumed command of the Military Airlift Command and became a major consumer of air-refueling support.

Boeing’s KC-767 Advanced Tanker (AT) is an aircraft tailored to Air Force requirements, and offered based on how it can satisfy them in replacing the medium-sized Boeing KC-135.

Air Mobility Command (formerly Military Airlift Command) aircrews, war planners and their leaders know those needs better than anyone. They understand how to deploy and employ KC-10s and KC-135s — it is their profession.

A basic tenet of air-refueling operations is that tankers do not operate as single aircraft, but rather as tanker task forces normally deployed to forward expeditionary airfields to support joint theater air-refueling requirements.
These will include refueling support for attack, fighter, bomber and reconnaissance aircraft as well as airlift traffic transiting the joint area of operations. To evaluate competing designs realistically, therefore, it is essential to examine their performance as a fleet.

The KC-767’s ability to operate with a full fuel load from shorter runways, at higher elevations, in hotter temperatures and from more austere airfields than competing aircraft give it a critical edge in a fleet-on-fleet comparison. Its smaller size allows a higher Maximum on the Ground, or MOG, at the typically smaller airfields, thereby putting more booms in the sky. This capability is critical to the future of how America will fight tomorrow’s wars. Quite simply, flexibility is the key to airpower.

But that flexibility is in danger of being confused with capacity. No one will deny that European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp. offer a bigger tanker than Boeing.

If selected, the KC-30 would be the second-largest aircraft in the Air Force’s inventory (53 percent larger than the KC-767AT) and its footprint on the tarmac, at 38,000 square feet, severely restricts the number that can be accommodated at many small airfields guaranteed payday loans. Additionally, it’s 25 percent heavier, and burns 24 percent more fuel than the KC-767AT.

Not only is fuel efficiency a key performance parameter in the KC-X competition, it’s a real-world budget consideration. As the largest consumer of fuel in the Defense Department, the Air Force would spend almost $600 million a year more with just a $10 increase in the cost of a barrel of oil. So selecting the European KC-30 is like blowing your budget on a gas guzzler.

Each company has its own philosophical approach concerning the pilot’s authority over flight controls and resulting aircraft performance. All Airbus aircraft have limits placed upon maneuvers that are strictly enforced by flight-control computers despite inputs by the pilot.

Simply said, a military pilot may need to accomplish a dramatic maneuver to avoid anti-aircraft artillery or a missile shot — and in an Airbus aircraft, the computer physically restricts a maneuver that is outside the parameters established by lines of code in a computer program.

I cannot imagine a computer limiting a maneuver before the desired effect was obtained. There will be no such limits on the KC-767. The pilot will have full authority over the aircraft.

My conclusion, therefore, is that a fleet of tankers close to the KC-135 in ramp footprint, but equipped with modern engines and aerodynamic capabilities, provides a definite edge in terms of fuel offload, booms in the sky and maneuverability over a significantly larger aircraft, and does it with fewer airframes.

THOMAS M. RYAN JR., A RETIRED AIR FORCE GENERAL, SERVED AS THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE MILITARY AIRLIFT COMMAND FROM 1983 TO 1985. HE WAS VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS, WITH MCDONNELL DOUGLAS AIRCRAFT CO. FROM 1987 TO 1992. IN ADDITION TO ADVISING BOEING CO., HE IS AN INDEPENDENT AEROSPACE CONSULTANT.

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