Finding the 
balance among the three components of the Air Force—active duty, Reserve, and Air National Guard—will be critical as the service continues looking for new efficiencies and ways to trim its overall budget, said Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, head of Air Force Reserve Command. Operation Odyssey Dawn, which oversaw the initial establishment and enforcement of the no-fly zone in Libya, is the perfect example of how seamlessly the three components are able to work together today and why it’s important to ensure that continues into the future. “When Libya kicked off, there was a very small planning timeframe. Within 36 hours we had people from 50 different locations, tankers from 50 different locations on Moron AB, Spain. “Twelve hours later were putting gas into jets. That’s huge … from an operational standpoint and from a command standpoint, if I don’t have enough money, having the three components working together is a much stronger entity than any one working separately.”
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.