Word: fleetly
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...more than either the Army or Navy - developing new weapons. So at a time when politicians never tire of declaring their unbridled support for the men and women in uniform, you would think Washington could figure out a way to replace the Air Force's aging, half-century-old fleet of aerial refueling tankers...
...That was essentially the verdict delivered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday, when he officially gave up on the Bush Administration's tortured quest to purchase flying gas stations to replace the current fleet of KC-135 tankers, which average 47 years old. "How incompetent can the Air Force be?" Danielle Brian, head of the Project on Government Oversight, a private watchdog group, wondered following Gates' announcement. "Buying a tanker really shouldn't be this complicated...
...further evidence that defense choices are always made on a sliding scale, balancing costs against risks. While Air Force officials have been arguing for years that new tankers were needed yesterday, Gates made it clear Wednesday that's not quite the case. Stepped-up funding for the aging tanker fleet, he said, will ensure they're kept safely flying until the Air Force finally gets its act together. Even Lichte, who began his career flying KC-135s more than three decades ago, conceded as much. "The 135 is doing pretty good," he said. "For an old airplane it's hanging...
...billion. While it's easy to understand why the U.S. is leery of jeopardizing recent security gains with a hasty troop withdrawal - despite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisting on a timetable for ending the American military presence - the logic of Baghdad's effort to acquire a fleet of sophisticated warplanes is less clear...
...August to blast the Russians while Brown vacationed uncomfortably in Scotland. British Foreign Minister David Miliband took the baton and traveled to Ukraine, another country deeply worried about Moscow's expansionist ambitions. Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, inhabited mostly by ethnic Russians and home to the Russian Black Sea fleet, is one of several areas with allure for Russian irredentists. (It was only in 1954 that Ukrainian-born Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev shifted administrative control over the Crimea from Moscow to Kiev...