One person you wouldn’t expect to be losing sleep over the current F-15 grounding is US Transportation Command boss Gen. Norton Schwartz. But Schwartz told a Capitol Hill audience Thursday that the F-15 situation is a “stark reminder” that a key aircraft being grounded can cause huge problems for the entire US military. Schwartz is worried that USAF’s elderly fleet of some 500 KC-135 aerial refuelers will find a way to break that can’t be fixed, stranding the Air Force with just 59 KC-10s. USAF expects to award a contract for the first new replacement tankers, the KC-X program, in February, but at the planned rate of about 12 to 18 new tankers per year, replacement of the entire KC-135 fleet will take about 40 years.
The Air Force overall reduced its size by 120 aircraft in fiscal year 2021, but kept about the same number of fighter, bomber and attack aircraft, according to data supplied by the service. The F-35 fleet saw the biggest increase while the B-1B bomber fleet saw the largest decline.