The annual Congressionally mandated Aircraft Investment Plan that’s supposed to accompany the Defense Department’s budget request isn’t ready yet, a Pentagon spokeswoman said. DOD’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office is still developing the document, she told the Daily Report Wednesday. It is “in coordination and will be sent to Congress in about a month,” she said. DOD submitted last year’s AIP—the first-ever such document—on time. Congress last year complained that the plan, which plots the Pentagon’s planned aircraft investments over a 30-year period, didn’t mention significant upgrades, such as F-22 improvements. DOD countered that the legislation ordering the document didn’t task it to do that. Among its insights, last year’s plan showed that the Navy would buy far more aircraft in the coming decade than the Air Force. (See also The Thirty-Year Drought from Air Force Magazine’s 2010 archive.)
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.