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Tanker bids could take 4 more years

The Air Force is preparing a list of ways the next administration could replace the KC-135 aerial tanker fleet, including blueprints for competitions that would last as few as eight months to ones that could span 48 months.

The “range of options” includes “a cold start to an [analysis of alternatives] to a more abbreviated process … that could include just an RfP,” Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, told reporters during a Monday press briefing at an Air Force Association-sponsored conference in Washington.

On Sept. 10, Defense Secretary Robert Gates halted a competition between Boeing and a team composed of Northrop Grumman and EADS for a $35 billion, 179-plane contract. That race was launched earlier this summer after congressional auditors upheld Boeing’s protest of the Air Force’s decision on Feb. 29 to buy the flying gas stations from the Northrop-EADS team.

At the Sept. 15 briefing, Schwartz said Air Force officials hope to meet soon with the Northrop-EADS team to work out the details of terminating the February contract, but no date has yet been set.

When a reporter asked the air chief and Michael Donley, the acting Air Force secretary, “how dead is the tanker competition?” an intense-looking Schwartz replied sternly: “It’s not dead.”

As for the options, the general said, “I hope we can come up with a less complicated acquisition strategy that doesn’t have 800 different criteria.”

Their predecessors had placed the KC-X tanker program atop the services primary acquisition needs, a rare move for the fighter aircraft-focused service.

It remains undecided where the program will rank under Donley and Schwartz, with the acting secretary saying he has yet to conduct the kind of comprehensive servicewide analysis needed to rank weapons-buying priorities.

But the duo signaled another of those top priorities, the CSAR-X rescue helicopter effort, could culminate with a contract award before the end of the Bush administration’s second term. Donley said he sees a contract being awarded for new helicopters in “a couple of months.”

Meanwhile, Donley also said he has yet to direct the kind of “top-line analysis” needed to determine whether the Air Force will continue to tell Pentagon brass and Congress it needs $20 billion more than current planned each year, a contention often made by the last Air Force secretary and chief.

Further, the new leaders also they have not had time to consider “specific numbers” of a list of aircraft, including C-17s, F-22s and F-35s, that might be needed to conduct future expected missions.

But Schwartz said he feels “there’s a legitimate argument that can be made that we should have a handoff between production lines” between planes currently being built and “generation-five planes.”

That comment seems to place Schwartz on the side of building what officials and analysts have called an “acquisition bridge” between F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II production — by either building more F-22s, or stretching out the current F-22 buy, or beginning construction of F-35s sooner than planned. Both fighters are being built by Lockheed Martin.

During the session with reporters, the two leaders also discussed a number of other issues, including annual budgets.

Donley said he has asked service officials to examine how the Air Force might move some things that have been purchased using war supplements into the annual budget. Specifically, he pointed to things like UAVs; sensors; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms.

Several industry officials briefing reporters at the conference have said their companies are planning for “flattening” defense budgets during the next administration. But Donley said he “does not want to anticipate a reduction” in the Air Force’s yearly spending level.

Schwartz endorsed two programs that, if current plans are fully enacted, would add advanced airframes to the fleet: a next-generation bomber and the Joint Combat Aircraft.

The former is a “vital program for the country,” he said. On the latter, the four-star said: “There is a clear need for a plane of that size.” The Air Force is slated to purchase about 24 medium-sized JCA cargo planes.