JOINT BASE McGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. — Col. John F. Price Jr., commander of the 305th Air Mobility Wing here, has to make sure his KC-10s are ready to deploy at a moment's notice in case the Tanker Airlift Control Center at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, orders him to send some of his tankers reserved for training to respond to an event somewhere around the world.
For example, when former South African President Nelson Mandela died, Price was ordered to provide KC-10s to refuel Air Force One so that it could take President Obama to the funeral.
"We already had a heavy commitment of both KC-135s and KC-10s out doing the nation’s business," Price said. "It was either: You stop doing what the combatant commanders want and take those tails; or, what they often choose to do is, they’ll leave those doing their active mission in Iraq, Afghanistan — , wherever they may be — , and then they take ones from the home station."
There are some maintenance issues that are not serious enough to stop KC-10s from flying local training missions but need to be fixed before the planes deploy, he said.
"Delayed discrepancies" are things that are wrong with an aircraft, but that they are not "show-stoppers" that prevent the aircraft from flying, Price said.
"If I start collecting a lot of delayed discrepancies, then that means maintenance has not had enough time to go and do the basic things that they need to do with the jet," a trend that is carefully monitored, Price said in a Nov. 13 interview.
"In an ideal world, maintenance wants to fix everything and have a fully operational jet, whether it's going on a local training mission or whether it's going downrange," Price said. "But there are some things that they would do preventatively if they know it's going to launch for a mission, which is why we try to always give them a prep window for the jet before it leaves home station."
"Let's say, for example, we know that next Wednesday, there's going to be a big demand signal," Price said. "TACC telegraphs us and says, 'Hey, get ready.' Most likely, what we'd do is we would not fly locals next Tuesday. We might even not fly locals next Monday and say: 'Hey maintenance team, get them all ready and do the best you can.'"
It's harder for Price to make sure his KC-10s get all the maintenance they need if more than 80 percent of them are committed to flying missions in the U.S. or overseas, he said. The "commitment rate" can hover right around 80 percent in the summer because that has been the traditional fighting season in Afghanistan.
"It's a busy community, much like it is with the ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] — the recce community — they're busy; much like it is with the SOF [special operations forces] community," Price said. "But that's where leadership comes in and makes sure that folks get a chance to take their leave and that there is appropriate spacing between the time that they go on a mission or they go on a deployment."
Leaders across the Air Force are monitoring how well tanker maintainers and aircrew are holding up, he said.
"We can have healthy airplanes, but if we run the stress level for our aircrew or our maintainers too high, then the system breaks down, and, all of a sudden, you start having incidents and all kinds of problems," Price said.
