Our war against Iran is now in its third week. President Trump has said, “We took a little excursion” to the Middle East “to get rid of some evil. And, I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion.” Later last week he said. “We’ve won, let me tell you, we’ve won.”
Neither of those statements is true which is not to say we won’t or can’t win. Unfortunately, the president still hasn’t said what he means by “winning” or what we want to achieve in Iran.
Some 13 U.S. servicemen have died so far in this war. Included among them are four Air Force members who died when their KC-135 air refueling tanker collided with another aircraft over Iraq. At this point we don’t know why the aircraft collided or what caused the crash.
As far back as 2005, I had written an article for The American Spectator explaining that the KC-135 should be replaced with a more modern tanker. (The KC-135 had an “initial operational capability — went into deployment — in June 1957.) We have about 340 KC-135s of various ages. Most are ancient and suffer from over-stressed wing roots and such. The Air Force is trying to replace them with the KC-46, another Boeing product, which is beset with too many technical problems.
Without dredging up too many memories, I recall interviewing Gen. John Jumper, then USAF chief of staff, for that article. Gen. Jumper told me, “We are global air and space power because of these tankers.” He added, “The first thing that happens in any contingency is that you put the tanker bridge up there. We deploy tankers to places such as Spain, Hawaii, Guam and their sole purpose is to get large transport aircraft halfway around the world without stopping.”
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