Well, Senator Murray, perhaps you should have stayed a bit closer to the project. Confronting the AF after the horse has left the barn? You should be ashamed of yourself. To you, the government is supposed to provide jobs and you were asleep at the wheel.
I think Boeing will shut down the 767 line if it can’t get any more commercial order orders for it. The line has been running at about the minimal economically sustainable rate of 12 per year just to keep it warm for the KC-45. Boeing really shot itself in the foot with the leasing scandal. If that hadn’t happened perhaps Boeing would have already built most of the initial 100 767 tankers and the USAF would have already been able to start retiring the KC-135E’s. Perhaps the KC-30 is the best tanker available four years from now from a new factory built in Alabama, but the existing 767 line had the spare capacity five years ago. The point of the leasing arrangement was to decrease the upfront acquisition costs and get more tankers built more quickly. As a pure KC-135 replacement at existing bases, the 767 is probably superior due to the need for minimal changes to hangers.