Tactical Air Refueling

Largely the result of military restructuring away from overseas basing to a strategy of forward presence, the Air Force has adopted a concept of Global Power-Global Reach. Air Mobility Command has been charged to provide the Global Reach needed to project power abroad. The venerable KC-135 is a key component of the mobility half of this national warfighting strategy. Since its creation in the mid-to-late 1950s, the KC-135 Strato-Tanker has been involved in every United States war, regional conflict, special, contingency, peacekeeping, relief and peacemaking operation. The training requirements levied upon tanker crew members are not based upon projected--or past--theater employment experience. This paper seeks to chronicle the wartime experiences of tanker crews. This paper concludes with two findings: TYPE="1" A 100% bottom-up review of current training requirements is needed.Innovative modeling techniques should be used to select tactical air refueling training events for use in the simulator and during KC-135 flights. The adoption of these strategies will more closely link day-to-day tanker training activity to tanker wartime taskings.

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