Seeking a Balance in the Tanker Force

The United States Air Force, the Air National Guard, and the Department of Defense as a whole have operated at extremely high mobility levels since the events of 9/11. It is widely believed that they cannot continue to do so without some kind of major breakdown. Specifically, the Air Force must find a better way to manage our global refueling requirements and assets and provide some kind of relief and stability to the men and women who keep this critical system working. BRAC consolidation steps are reducing, albeit slightly, the overall numbers of KC-135's Air Force-wide and in the case of associate units, active duty and ANG personnel will operate under a separate chain of command but fly the same, smaller fleet of aircraft. The weighted distribution of assets towards the ANG forces it to play a much more significant daily role in the AMC refueling mission than it does in the typical operations of fighter units or Army National Guard units. And, as numbers will show, the active duty units, with their smaller number of assets, are shouldering the brunt of the combat work due to deployment limitations of the modern ARC community. One possible solution to mitigating the high operations tempo of the tanker community is a more equitable distribution of assets across the active, Guard, and Reserve communities. The Total Force Initiatives will help ease the tempo, but if the next 20 years are anything like the last, they will only be a band-aid on a much bigger problem.