Air Force-Army cooperation has come a long with since Operation Anaconda in early 2002. [Read our coverage here and here.] In that Army-led action, ground force commanders failed to even notify the air component until shortly before the operation was to begin. The result was chaos, as ground forces ran into trouble and the air component was forced to improvise a protective response.
The Air Force’s nascent KC-Z program, aimed at developing a next-generation family of systems for aerial refueling, will look to launch its analysis-of-alternatives study in 2024, years earlier than originally planned. Originally, the analysis of alternatives for KC-Z was set for “maybe in the 2030s,” Paul Waugh, program executive officer…