USAF walks back tanker forecast: ‘We don’t know what our strategy is’

[rangerrebew]

USAF walks back tanker forecast: ‘We don’t know what our strategy is’
As Boeing KC-46 deliveries resume, officials mull how many more—if any—to order.
AUDREY DECKER | AUGUST 1, 2023
AIR FORCE INDUSTRY LOGISTICS
   
DAYTON, Ohio—Several months after the Air Force’s top weapons buyer said the service would likely buy 75 additional KC-46 tankers, the service’s deputy program manager for mobility aircraft says not so fast.

It “doesn't matter what any person—senior leader or otherwise—has said. We don't know what our acquisition strategy is,” Scott Boyd said Monday at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference here. He said the service will likely settle on a plan by next June.

The Air Force needs more tankers to serve the fleet until its next-gen aerial refueler, or NGAS, arrives in the middle of next decade. But just how many depends on the murky question of when NGAS will actually arrive.

“If we ended up getting 2035 wrong, then perhaps we got the quantity of what we needed wrong. That's everyone's concern: the Air Force has that same concern, Congress has that concern, industry certainly has that concern,” Boyd said.

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/08/usaf-walks-back-tanker-prediction-we-dont-know-what-our-strategy/389006/

[rangerrebew]

‘We don’t know what our strategy is’
 

Oh really?  I couldn't tell!

And their Chief of Staff may be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs?

[PeteS in CA]

This illustrates a reason companies are reluctant to enter into the defense contractor marketplace. A contract might initially be for X00 or X,000 something-or-others, but the service branch or Congress might slash the numbers or suddenly shut down the program entirely. An example of this would be the uncertain status of the F/A-18 Hornet in the late 70s, when some in Congress were trying to kill the program entirely (over time, aging F-4s and A-7s and their different logistics streams would have been replaced by a single, modern, plane, but some Congress Critters' districts might have been adversely affected; and it was the anti-Defense 1970s).