The Pentagon has agreed to a nine-year plan to acquire 100 Everett-built Boeing 767s for the U.S. Air Force.
The new proposal "strikes a necessary balance between the critical need for new air-refueling tanks and the constraints on our budget," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz wrote in a letter to U.S. Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Finally assembly of the first of the KC-767 tankers is set to begin next month, a Machinists union spokeswoman said. The planes will be built in Everett and modified for military use in Wichita, Kan.
The deal comes at a critical time for Boeing’s 767 line. The company has orders from airlines for a little more than two dozen 767s, and Chairman Phil Condit said recently that without a U.S. Air Force tanker buy, Boeing would have to consider shutting the line down.
The deal announced today accepts Warner’s recently proposed compromise, under which the Air Force would lease the first 20 jets, then buy the remaining 80. However, it stretches deliveries out over nine years, instead of the six-year schedule envisioned under the original proposal to lease all 100 jets.
Deliveries would start in 2006, and stretch into 2014 under the new Pentagon proposal.
The new compromise still must be approved by Congressional oversight panel, including Warner’s Armed Services Committee. However, three of those committees approved the original 100-jet lease deal.
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