Air Force Reserve and Air Mobility Command will be slowly ramping up the three new active associations being formed at Keelser AFB, Miss., March ARB, Calif., and Peterson AFB, Colo., says Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief. “Over the next three to four years, we will do a gradual implementation to something that is considered like fully operational capable,” he told reporters Feb. 19 during AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando. These new partnerships were announced last October. Active duty personnel will team with Air Force Reserve Command’s C-130 combat-delivery units at Keesler and Peterson and with its KC-135 tanker unit at March. He also noted that the pairing at Peterson will mark the first active duty presence in the mobile airborne firefighting mission. And, he did not exclude the possibility of active duty personnel also supporting Keesler’s WC-130J weather-monitoring aircraft at some later point. (Also see below, Switching Jobs?)
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.