Senior Air Force leaders would prefer starting a competition to replace the service’s aging KC-135 aerial tanker fleet in the coming months -- rather than waiting until several studies are wrapped up in fiscal year 2007, service officials say.

Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne late last year said the service likely will push the program’s start to FY-07 to further examine how the planes could carry combinations of fuel, equipment, passengers and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. However, service leaders would prefer to find a way to speed the start of the multibillion-dollar competition, several service officials recently told Inside the Air Force.

But making such a move will not be simple, those officials said. “Would an FY-06 start be better? Yes,” one official said. “But we have to go at a crawl’s pace because everyone is watching this,” the official said, adding bluntly, “Especially Congress.”

The service officials’ comments come as the service attempts to move forward with a replacement effort while also treading through increased scrutiny brought about by the fallout associated with Darleen Druyun, a former Air Force acquisition official. She has completed a prison sentence for violating conflict-of-interest laws after admitting that she arranged her post-Air Force Employment with Boeing while negotiating a $30 billion tanker lease deal with the company. Druyun also admitted to tainting a number of other big-ticket contracts.

Air Force officials, however, appear ready to re-launch the replacement program in coming months.

Service and Pentagon officials have for months repeatedly said Pentagon acquisition officials must first finish assessing a RAND-conducted analysis of alternatives before moving forward with a KC-135 replacement program.

The Defense Acquisition Board met this week to review that AOA. Following the meeting, the Defense Department released an “information paper” that merely said Pentagon acquisition chief Kenneth Krieg and the other DAB members “congratulated” RAND and the Pentagon offices that helped the think tank carry out the assessment.

For its part, the department was tight-lipped about the meeting, with a Pentagon spokeswoman saying only that no formal decisions were made at the meeting. She added that military acquisition officials have yet to finish “digesting” the AOA.

Industry teams vying for a multibillion-dollar contract to replace the Air Force’s aging KC-135 aerial refueling tankers expect the Pentagon to issue a solicitation early next year seeking data on new refueling aircraft, several industry officials said late last year (ITAF, Nov. 25, 2005, p1).

Air Force and Pentagon officials initially indicated the first formal solicitation seeking data about potential KC-135 replacements would be issued last fall. However, several senior industry officials involved in the tanker replacement effort have said military officials pushed back the release of a request for information after adding several crucial steps to their review of a RAND-conducted analysis of alternatives, including “vetting” the assessment on Capitol Hill.

Even with the added steps and cautious approach, a service official said senior Air Force leaders have discussed kicking off the competition in the middle of FY-06. That meshes with predictions made late last year by several officials heavily involved in the effort.

Northrop Grumman and EADS officials expect the RFI will be issued “in the first quarter” of calender 2006, Marty Dandridge, executive vice president of Northrop’s international systems sector, said late last year. He also is general manager of of the company’s aerial tanker program.

One senior industry official involved with the Boeing proposal was more specific, telling ITAF at the same time that an RFI likely would hit the streets toward the tail end of that first quarter of 2006 -- likely in February or March.

Meanwhile, as the AOA review drags on, two industry proposals are expected once the competition officially is launched. Northrop Grumman and EADS are teaming to pitch the conceptual KC-30 tanker aircraft, which would be based on the Airbus A-330. Boeing is proposing its KC-767 aerial refueler, but has said if a larger plane is needed for the expected cargo mission, the company could easily enter a more suitable airframe for the competition (ITAF, Dec. 9, 2005, p6).

With that line becoming the standard uttered for months by Air Force and Office of the Secretary of Defense officials, some military commanders have lately expressed a bit of impatience. For instance, U.S. Transportation Command chief Gen. Norton Schwartz on Dec. 8 strongly urged Pentagon officials to formally launch a program to replace the Air Force’s venerable KC-135 aerial tankers this year -- as opposed to waiting until FY-07 (ITAF, Dec. 9, 2005, p1).

“I think we need to get started without delay, like, right now,” Schwartz said. “Get on with it,” he added. The four-star was responding to a reporter’s question based on Wynne’s comments.

The Air Force “wants to proceed along a timetable like the one advocated by Gen. Schwartz,” another Air Force source recently told ITAF. “But [service officials] really have to do our due diligence on this one” because of the failed lease deal, the official added.

That work will include crafting a detailed set of requirements for the new fleet of flying gas stations, which could be required to double, at times, as a cargo hauler and carry a suite of ISR systems to gather battlefield data.

In the wake of the failed lease deal -- and faced with the increased scrutiny of the replacement effort -- Air Force leaders have let it be known that “we have to come up with a nearly perfect set of requirements,” the service official said. “If we want [the new tankers] to do cargo and do ISR, the requirements have to be written clearly for industry. And I mean everything done by the book.”

The Pentagon has yet to finalize its tanker replacement requirements, officials said. Because industry officials have not seen the AOA or a request for information, both the Northrop-EADS and Boeing teams have said they are basing their work on the requirements the Air Force highlighted during the failed 2002 KC-135 replacement effort and other requirements they suspect the service has since tacked on (ITAF, Sept. 16, 2005, p1; Sept. 23, 2005, p1).