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Split plan delays tanker purchase

On Capitol Hill, key lawmakers are suggesting the Air Force should make a split purchase of air refueling planes, buying one type from Boeing and another from Northrop Grumman.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who heads the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, is arguing planes could be built more quickly if there are two assembly lines. That’s curious reasoning since Washington has prevented the Air Force from getting a new tanker for almost a decade.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, chairman of the House Armed Services panel that oversees air and land programs, also thinks a split purchase is the only way of breaking the political deadlock.

How sad that our elected leaders are so paralyzed by partisanship that they can’t make difficult decisions. They should realize a split purchase would be a disservice to taxpayers and troops — taxpayers because of the substantial extra costs, troops because of safety.

The biggest losers of all, though, would be the pilots, boom operators and maintainers who’ve waited so long for a replacement for the geriatric KC-135 Stratotanker.

A KC-135 that I flew aboard in May 2007 made loud, creaking sounds that no crew member could identify. As one put it, “We don’t know what causes those noises.”

Most KC-135 airmen have confidence in their seasoned workhorse, but a few wonder whether undetected safety issues put them in danger every time they journey into the air.

“Even if there are no further delays, we will still have KC-135s flying late until the 2040s, which makes that airplane well over 80 years old and, in some cases, close to 90,” Gen. Arthur Lichte, the boss at Air Mobility Command, said in an interview last year. “From the war fighter’s point of view, we need to get on with this.”

All the wrangling should have ended more than a year ago when Northrop Grumman’s Airbus A330-200 won out over the Boeing 767-200. But Boeing contested the $35 billion decision, touching off more partisan bickering that killed the deal.

The politicians shouldn’t have given any credence to a nonbinding decision by the Government Accountability Office to uphold Boeing’s protest. The aircraft manufacturer delivered its last KC-135 in 1965, and not one employee who worked on the design and development of that plane is still on the payroll. Since then, Boeing has assembled just eight tankers — four each for Japan and Italy — in programs that pose fewer technical challenges than the Air Force’s but have been plagued by technical glitches nonetheless. Italy’s air arm is now about four years behind schedule putting its Boeing 767-200 tankers into operation.

To their credit, Gates and other defense officials are against a split purchase. But Capitol Hill politics may be more powerful than Pentagon pragmatism.

We have lost our common sense. Gates should reinstate the decision to purchase the Airbus tanker and allow Northrop Grumman to begin assembling an aircraft that is bigger, farther reaching and more flexible than its Boeing rival.

Given the good will President Barack Obama and Gates enjoy at the moment, we should be able to begin acquiring new planes for our airmen without a split purchase and without another needless competition.

Dorr’s most recent book is “Hell Hawks,” a history of an American fighter group. Write to him at robert.f.dorr@cox.net.