“The Air Force has about the right structure except for the need to add long-range strike—more long-range strike,” former Defense Secretary William Perry testified last week on Capitol Hill. Perry was highlighting one of the Congressionally chartered Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel’s Air Force-related recommendations for defense policymakers. Perry specifically told the House Armed Services Committee July 29 that the review panel thinks the Air Force should move forward with “another deep strike [platform]” as a follow-on to the B-2. This platform, he continued, should “have the kind of stealth capabilities that the B-2 has.” Such stealth attributes are a “unique capability that the United States has today and one which will be very important . . . in any new deep-strike bomber,” said Perry. He co-chaired the bipartisan 18-member panel with Stephen Hadley, national security advisor to President George H. Bush. Continue
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.