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Naval Air Refueling Needs Deferred in Air Force Tanker Plan

By Hunter C. Keeter
Associate Editor
Sea Power
April 2004

The public spotlight in Washington has for months been focused on an Air Force lease-purchase plan for 100 aerial tankers supplied by the Boeing Co. that some defense experts, such as Sen. John S. McCain, R-Ariz., say would waste at least $2 billion. The controversy has been accompanied by all the accoutrements of a typical Capitol Hill fistfight including headlines, hearings, television klieg lights, the firing of two senior executives of a government contractor — in this case, Boeing — and assorted investigations.

Almost ignored amid the controversy over the $22.3 billion plan were Navy and Marine Corps needs for special devices that would bolster long-range aerial refueling capacity. That requirement was deferred by the Air Force long before the lease-purchase deal began to make headlines.

The Navy and Marine refueling requirements differ from those of the Air Force and the lack of tanker capability could limit their role in some operations, such as longer-range tactical strikes like those that occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq. The nation’s strategic tanker fleet is maintained by the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, which told Sea Power that the purchase of some hardware to meet naval requirements had been deferred.

Air Force jets refuel from a “flying boom” system. The Navy’s jets, like their NATO counterparts, use a hose reel and “basket” refueling system. The Air Force’s existing tankers, KC-10s and the 43-year-old KC-135s, have both flying booms and baskets. However, the KC-135s must be configured before takeoff to use either the flying boom or the hose reel. The KC-10 can use either device in a single sortie, meaning there are relatively few tankers that can readily switch between boom and basket.

That is one of several reasons why the Navy has an additional requirement to meet refueling demands. Naval air forces, including the Marine Corps’ 72 F/A-18D fighters, require tankers to refuel more than one fighter jet at a time with the hose reel system.

Fifteen of the 59 KC-10s and 45 of the 543 KC-135 tankers are fitted with the Wing Air Refueling Pod (WARP) supplied by Britain’s Flight Refueling Ltd., and can simultaneously refuel at least two naval aircraft.

Aerial Refueling Requirements New missions combined with the greater air refueling demands on an aging fleet suggest the need for new assets. The U.S. Navy requires strategic tankers capable of simultaneously refueling multiple aircraft. The U.S. Air Force plans to purchase new strategic refueling planes initially without simultaneous refueling capability. The Navy is dependent upon strategic refueling planes, while considering a new tanker aircraft for its own carrier air wings.

The Air Force’s initial plans for the 100 new tankers it wants to lease or purchase from Boeing do not include the WARP. The Air Force says its decision to defer the WARP was based on weight, drag and cost considerations. That could mean the Navy would be left out of some operations during a conflict.

In a statement to Sea Power, the Air Mobility Command explained it this way: “An aerial refueling requirement [during a conflict] must meet both receiver fuel offload, and aircraft boom/baskets availability demand.” In other words, requests for fuel should match the capacity to deliver it.

The military’s effort to achieve the right match-ups has yielded mixed results. Operation Desert Storm, Operation Allied Force in 1999 over Yugoslavia and Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 demonstrated that requests for fuel offload do not always match the capacity to deliver it; hence the term, low-density, high-demand, that is applied to tankers.

During Operation Desert Storm in 1991 the Navy relied extensively upon land-based tanking support. But the limited access to strategic tankers curtailed the Navy’s long-range strike capability.

Rear Adm. Mark P. Fitzgerald, director of air warfare requirements on the Navy staff, told Sea Power that Air Force KC-135A tankers flying in 1991 from Cairo supported the Navy’s Red Sea carriers. Because the KC-135As had a single “hard hose,” the Navy had quickly to cycle six to eight tactical aircraft thru the hose, “and by the time last aircraft tanked, the first needed gas.” The process required three to four refueling hits for each aircraft before reaching Iraq. With up to 24 aircraft in a strike force and four KC-135s, “on several occasions this required in-flight reshuffle and occasional aircraft gas aborts when one of the tanker hoses would fail.”

However, Fitzgerald emphasized that the Air Force tanker crews performed heroic service and were limited only “by their equipment, but not by their courage and can-do.”

Experts told Sea Power they anticipate that the lessons learned in the 2003 Iraq war will suggest a dearth of tanker capability.

So the question remains: Will the Air Force fulfill the Navy requirement for simultaneous refueling capability and, if so, when? The Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is responsible for prioritizing the sometimes competing requirements of the military services, refused to answer questions about how the Navy’s voice is heard in the development of joint tanker requirements.

Air Mobility Command officials said, “We expect aerial refueling requirements to increase after 2010 as the numbers of global missions dependent on aerial refueling assets increase. … We plan to field the capability to in-flight refuel various aircraft types (including helicopters) as well as multiple aircraft, simultaneously.”

A senior Navy official told Sea Power, “We think the Air Force is still committed [to simultaneously refueling more than one aircraft]. The Air Force accepted that requirement but noted that, because of the research and development money and the weight and fuel penalties involved, [it] could not do that right away and would delay that and do it in a spiral of the new tanker. That is where it stopped.”

A “spiral” means that the tankers will be gradually upgraded after they are obtained and deployed.

The Navy and the Air Force are working on the exact number of new tankers that should be WARP-equipped, the senior Navy official said. “Right now, with the Air Force’s KC-10s, fewer than one out of every three KC-10s has the pods. We don’t know whether that is the right mix or not for the new tanker.”

The Air Mobility Command’s KC-135s were built by Boeing under government contract in the 1950s. This design became the basis for the commercial 707. The command plans for the oldest KC-135Es to be retired and the remaining 411 KC-135Rs and 59 KC-10s to be provided modern communication and navigation suites meeting global air traffic management requirements.

In 2002, negotiations between the Air Force and Boeing led to a proposal to Congress in May 2003 of a six-year lease for new tankers derived from the 767 commercial jet. Boeing and the Italian firm Alenia Aerospazio Aeronavali are offering a scalable refueling system for 767s comprising Britain’s Smiths Aerospace hose reel, WARP and Boeing’s flying boom technology. The lease-purchase proposal was extremely complex, and included the establishment of a trust by Boeing and the Air Force to finance the purchase of the aircraft. Boeing forecast the price at $150 million to $225 million per plane in fiscal year 2001 dollars.

But the Air Force’s 767-derived tanker acquisition has been stymied by debate, a DoD hold on the purchase and Boeing’s Feb. 20 announcement that it would scale back work on the tanker pending the outcome of official investigations. Congress wants to know whether the Air Force allowed Boeing to modify the tanker requirements to suit the characteristics of the 767, precluding an analysis of alternatives. Investigation into the 767-derived tanker program continues through May. Meanwhile, at the behest of the Congress, the Air Force has begun an 18-month study of tanker force structure in light of the current national military strategy.

While the Navy has no plans to wean itself from dependence on Air Force strategic tankers, the sea service has its own refueling capabilities. Fitzgerald said the initial missions of Operation Enduring Freedom “would never have been possible” without a team effort between Air Force and carrier-based tanking.

In extremis, the naval air force can perform its own long-range power projection. On the first night of Operation Enduring Freedom, Oct. 7, 2001, the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier battle group launched a strike into southern Afghanistan. Fitzgerald said that mission required every tanker plane on the ship.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, “We were obviously able to cover the southern part of Iraq very well with just our organic capability,” Fitzgerald said. “But when you want to start projecting power all the way up into Baghdad, or when you start projecting power from the Mediterranean into northern Iraq, you have to be able to leverage the strategic refueling capability to be able to do that.”

That is where the “boom” and “basket” match-up can make a big difference.

The current organic carrier tanker is the S-3B Viking, a family of aircraft that has served a number of roles including antisubmarine warfare and intelligence gathering. But the venerable S-3B’s days are numbered. Boeing and Northrop Grumman, which produce the F/A-18E/F series, have equipped the new planes to convert as tankers.

Boeing’s Ted Herman, business development manager for the F-18 program, told Sea Power the Super Hornet tanker helps “extend the legs” of the strike aircraft and does not compromise on aerodynamic performance.

But the Navy is not entirely content with the Super Hornet as a tanker. While converted to refuel, the jet is not carrying weapons for strike missions. Fitzgerald said the Navy would consider a replacement for its C-2 logistics aircraft that may offer refueling capability. The C-2 replacement would either be the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor or the next model C-2. The Navy begins to retire the current fleet of C-2s in 2014.

“We are thinking about whether we just have C-2 replacement planes for logistics, or whether we should buy some more that would be available for recovery refueling,” Fitzgerald said.

Reporting by Sea Power Correspondent Amy Svitak Klamper and Associate Editor Hunter C. Keeter.