Possible tanker delay and cancelation of bomber project

I got the source from another site's thread: www.militaryphotos.net...

Obama Seeks to Delay Tanker, Cancel Bomber
By Josh Rogin, CQ Staff

The White House has given the Pentagon guidance to delay procurement of aerial refueling tankers by five years and cancel plans for a new long-range bomber, according to three sources close to the discussions.

No final decisions have been made, and the recommendations are part of negotiations between the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department over possible budget trade-offs this year, the sources said. The guidance represents two of the offset options that OMB gave the Pentagon last month regarding the fiscal 2010 Defense budget request.

If the guidance survives the internal budget process, a huge protest will follow on Capitol Hill, where dozens of lawmakers are heavily invested in the battle over tanker procurement, which has raged for years.

news-source: www.cqpolitics.com...

Mod Edit: Fixed spelling in title

[edit on 3/11/09 by FredT]

If Obama wins this: Then the USAF is realy screwed.

2nd line.

Well hey why not. Everyone keeps saying that there's nothing wrong with the tanker fleet other than the fact that they're 50 years old, so obviously there's nothing wrong with the bomber fleet either. I mean the B-2s are only in their 20s and the B-1s are only in their 30s. We can easily get another 50 years out of them before they're ready to retire!

reply to post by Zaphod58


I agree.

The B-52 and C-130 platforms are both over 50 years old and after numerous upgrades are integral parts of our war fighting capability.

I think Obama has probably just miffed the feathers of a few fat-cat, retired Generals sitting on the board of directors of Boeing and Lockheed.

This is simple realism: we're running out of money.

We can no longer afford to shower Boeing and Lockheed with taxpayer cash to buy the .mil every new shiny toy it wants.

The bombers and tanker fleet may be old and maintenance hungry, however they remain airworthy and very capable vs. any likely adversary.

I would rather lose B-3 and delay the new tanker than lose F-22.

I'd rather see us closing foreign bases than either actually, but the defense budget has to be cut significantly one way or another: that's just economic reality.

reply to post by xmotex


It's not a matter of buying them what they want as what they need. There are ways that they could be buying these planes and having them enter service over a period of years that would keep the costs down somewhat.

The last KC-135 entered service in the 1960s, and if they had bought the KC-45 last year they would have finished replacing the KC-135 in 2048 or so. The problem is that it takes so long to get new planes into service that we're going to have a capability gap, just like with the air defense mission in the US. The GAO found that of the 18 bases that cover the mainland US, between 12 and 14 of them are going to have to stop flying completely around 2015 because their fighters will be at the end of their service life.

And yet we manage to maintain 160 or so overseas bases...

Sadly the defense of the United States seems to be at the bottom of the list of our defense spending priorities.

That's fundamentally wrong, and needs to be changed.