SOUTHWEST ASIA (unspecified location) -- At the heart of the high-tech, wired-to-the-hilt American air war in Afghanistan is a rusting plane so old-school, it predates John F. Kennedy's term in the White House.
I'm in front of a matte-gray jet, designed to deliver gas to the rest of the American air armada as it buzzes over Central Asia and the Middle East. Every day, the KC-135 tankers here haul a million pounds of fuel. Without them, the fighter jets, bombers and airborne haulers circling above Afghanistan and Iraq would drop out of the sky. That's a pretty heavy burden for a bunch of old-timers -- this plane was built in 1960.
"And this is one of the newer ones," says Captain Nick LaPlant, as we walk past rusting flaps and visibly loose panels. "It's absolutely amazing it stays in the air still."
The cockpit is even more startling. "Time capsule: doesn't begin to describe it. The navigator's desk is held together by duct tape. The seats are covered with Mad Men-era light shag. There's even a sextant still embedded in the ceiling of the cockpit -- in case anyone needs to navigate by starlight.
Yet somehow, 91 percent of these tankers are ready to fly on a given day. (For the rest of the Air Force, that number is often in the 70s.) It's a testament to the 400-man maintenance team here, which not only tightens bolts and replaces blown tires. They are constantly making new ailerons and gears from scratch for the plane. The 135s are so old, some of the parts aren't even made any more. So sometimes the "fabrication flight" here runs a laser-tipped claw over an old tube -- scanning the specs into a computer-aided design program, from which they can burn a new piece. Or the flight uses a giant 32-bit robotic turret, to pound precision holes. Or they just do it the old-fashioned way and bend metal.
Now, not everything in the 135 is ancient. The avionics are new. Sensors turn the crew's cabin into a "glass cockpit," so they can see underneath the plane. This particular plane has extra communications gear installed, for special operations missions. Its CFM-109 engines are relative whippersnappers, installed in the 1980s.
Still, taking a tour of these planes only reinforces the utter and complete negligence of the folks in the Pentagon and in Congress who have managed for the better part of a decade to screw up the project to replace these creaking gas-haulers. The nearly $100-billion contract for the next generation of tankers has not been awarded yet, despite countless attempts. And the current crop will be around for a whole lot longer.
"They tell us the mother of the last 135 pilot hasn't been born yet. We expect to be flying these planes quite a few years longer," LaPlant says.
I tell LaPlant he must've misspoken – the mother of the last pilot? That's …
"Unfathomable, yeah."
[PHOTOS: Staff Sgt. Robert Barney]
See Also:
- Danger Room in Afghanistan: FedEx for the Front Line
- White House Puts Tankers, Bombers on Hit List
- Round 3 For $100 Billion Tanker Fight
- Boeing: What's Wrong With Our Tanker?
- Vote on Names for the $100 Billion Tanker
- Boeing on Tanker Deal: Waaaaahhhhh!!!!
- Breaking: Pentagon Cancels Tanker Competition (Updated)
