Having lost its battle to get 381 F-22 Raptors, the Air Force simply shrugged and moved on. In a joint press conference, new Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and the new Chief of Staff, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, said they will live with the Administration’s imposed cap of 183 F-22As—even though the service had maintained for more than two years that 381 was the minimum number. “We’re going to have to take into account that the Air Force we had planned on a few years ago may not come to fruition,” Wynne said, “but I will tell you, that has been a fact of life in the [Pentagon] for some time now.”
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.