{"id":58996,"date":"2021-11-15T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/11\/15\/brittle-air-refueling-capability-endangers-us-during-major-war\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:27:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:27:24","slug":"brittle-air-refueling-capability-endangers-us-during-major-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/news\/your-military\/2021\/11\/15\/brittle-air-refueling-capability-endangers-us-during-major-war\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Brittle\u2019 air refueling capability endangers US during major war"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. military\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/digital-show-dailies\/afa-air-space\/2021\/09\/17\/lockheed-reveals-new-lmxt-refueling-tanker-firing-the-opening-salvo-in-us-air-force-competition\/\" target=\"_blank\">aerial refueling capability<\/a> has become \u201cbrittle\u201d and aged, placing the nation at risk of being unable to sustain combat against a major adversary, a new report from the Hudson Institute said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The report, \u201cResilient Aerial Refueling: Safeguarding the U.S. Military\u2019s Global Reach,\u201d sounds several alarm bells about the military\u2019s tanker fleet and its possibly waning ability to help U.S. forces project power around the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIn 2021, the U.S. aerial refueling enterprise is losing altitude,\u201d said the report, released Monday and written by Timothy Walton and Bryan Clark of the institute\u2019s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since the end of the Cold War three decades ago, the report said, tankers have continued to fly to support both peaceful deployments and wartime operations around the world. As the military settled into an \u201cexpeditionary posture\u201d in which forces were more frequently deployed, the Air Force\u2019s tanker inventory shrunk from 701 aircraft to roughly 473, further increasing stress on the fleet. As this high pace of operations became a new normal for the tankers, the Hudson Institute said, the fleet was left with hardly any headroom to take on new missions \u2014 including responding to China or Russia, short of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWithout significant changes [the Defense Department] risks fielding air forces unable to conduct complex, distributed operations at scale,\u201d the report said. \u201cDuring conflict, adversaries may be emboldened to exploit vulnerabilities in both the brittle aerial refueling architecture and U.S. operational plans more broadly. As the strength of the U.S. aerial refueling architecture becomes a weakness, U.S. military forces may be incapable of deterring or defeating aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another concerning factor is the advancing age of the military\u2019s tankers \u2014 the average tanker is 52 years old \u2014 and the declining readiness that could result from an increasingly \u201cgeriatric\u201d fleet. Delays in bringing the new KC-46 Pegasus tanker into operation could worsen the situation, as older KC-10 Extender and KC-135 Stratotanker airframes are retired before their successor aircraft and their crews are ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hudson said the military \u2014 particularly the Air Force \u2014 will need to tackle improvements to its aerial refueling from several angles, not just by adding more tankers. The top priority, according to the authors, should be to significantly build up airfields, bulk fuel storage and distribution, and defenses in the Indo-Pacific region \u2014 to the tune of another $633 million per year for the next decade, and $400 million annually afterward. This could boost the military\u2019s tanker capacity in the region by 63% in a decade and roughly double it by 2041, the report said \u2014 even if it means the Air Force procures fewer tankers to pay for those improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the Air Force doesn\u2019t expand its refueling posture on the ground as well as distribute its forces and fuel stores, it could find itself cornered by China in a conflict, the report said. In such a conflict, the tanker fleet could find itself with about a dozen airfields from which to operate that have the necessary runway, ramp space and fuel stores, as well as political access, Hudson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This would seriously limit how many aircraft tankers could offer support, and place them at greater risk of attack, the report added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Defense Department \u201cshould improve the [tanker] architecture\u2019s resilience by evolving today\u2019s brittle posture to a more-distributed one that leverages clusters of mutually supporting military and civil airfields on U.S., allied and partner territory, consistent with the U.S. Air Force\u2019s Agile Combat Employment concept,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Further distribution of refueling operations would also help the military better protect its fuel stockpiles and keep access to tankers at sea and over-the-shore fuel delivery systems that the armed forces would need to move fuel in significant quantities, the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, the report said, the U.S. military\u2019s use civilian airfields in Japan and South Korea would complicate China\u2019s targeting efforts. Some of those airfields could be used for extended operations, it explained, and others could simply be \u201cdrop-in\u201d sites for tankers to quickly gas up and take off again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Air Force also needs to keep evolving its aerial refueling fleet, Hudson said, by fielding a new tanker to bridge the gap between the KC-46 and the next generation of aircraft known as the KC-Z. This bridge tanker, known as the KC-Y, could either be Boeing\u2019s KC-46 or Lockheed Martin\u2019s LMXT next-generation tanker, a modified Airbus A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hudson said the bridge tanker must be able to carry out long-range missions and offload large quantities of fuel, since small tankers aren\u2019t enough to meet the Air Force\u2019s requirements. But it warned that the bridge tanker program shouldn\u2019t sap money that would otherwise go to improving tankers already in the fleet, or developing the next-generation KC-Z advanced air refueling tanker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Air Force also must speed up development of the KC-Z, the report said; if 18-24 of those aircraft are procured each year, the Air Force could retire KC-135s earlier than expected and lower the overall age of the fleet, which would allow the Air Force to spend more on procurement and less on operations and support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The report also said that modernizing command, control and communications in aerial refueling would make operations more efficient and effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hudson Institute argues that the answer isn&#8217;t in more tankers, but better distribution of refueling architecture on the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":66210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":88,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[29,116,15,88],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3372],"class_list":["post-58996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-left-column","category-news","category-your-military"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"4L5FKYAWJFBRTDSNOA2GW2KUSA","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2021\/11\/15\/brittle-air-refueling-capability-endangers-us-during-major-war\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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