The Air Force’s Fleet Viability Board is engaged in assessing the higher-than-anticipated wear and tear the operations in Southwest Asia may have placed on the service’s EC-130H Compass Call electronic warfare platform, reports Flight Global. The assessment is due in January. Col. Stephen Brown, chief of electronic warfare requirements, told Flight Global that USAF’s 14 EC-130H communications jamming aircraft have flown at more than double the expected rate. (Compass Call sorties for Afghanistan surpassed 2,000 this summer; those over Iraq were at 3,000 earlier this year.) We reported earlier this month that the Air Force is hoping to pair with the Navy in its new EA-18G Growler. Maj. Gen. David Scott, Air Staff requirements director, also said the service is pursuing, as yet unidentified, stand-in capabilities for the airborne electronic attack mission. It has abandoned, once and for all, the notion of a B-52 stand-off jammer.
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.