The first of the KC-10 Extenders was delivered on March 17, 1981. With a full load of fuel, the KC-10 has the greatest range of any production aircraft in the world, and it can refuel planes using both the flying boom and hose-and-drogue methods.

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Despite the introduction of the KC-10, the KC-135 still made up the bulk of U.S. Air Force tanker assets. In 1984 a conversion program began in which the older tankers were upgraded with General Electric CFM 56 engines, reinforced wing spars and other improvements and redesignated KC-135Rs. While KC-10s primarily serve in the strategic role, refueling transports or large numbers of tactical aircraft on ferrying flights, KC-135s continue to perform most in-theater refueling.

Operation El Dorado Canyon, the 1986 bombing of Libya, was among the first conflicts in which the KC-10 saw service. Since European nations would not allow staging or overflight rights for the General Dynamics F-111s involved in that operation, all combat flights commenced in the British Isles and were refueled en route.
During Operation Desert Shield in 1990, KC-10s were in­volved in ferrying fighters to Saudi Arabia as part of the buildup for Operation Desert Storm. More than 300 tankers—KC-10s and KC-135s—flew nearly 15,000 sorties during those operations, performing some 46,000 refuelings.

In 1993, when SAC was inactivated, tankers were assigned to Air Mobility Command. As the U.S. military has continued to respond to global challenges—in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, for example—IFR continues to play an integral role in strategic and tactical operations.

Former tanker pilot Edward Lamar Jr., who flew KC-135Es and Rs for 15 years, likens the decisions a tanker pilot faces on each mission to playing a hand of cards: "You'd draw cards at different steps on the way—my crew, the airplane, the weather. And what happens is guys will look at cards individually and not compare them: 'Some auxiliary system's not working right; it's OK to take it. Well, the weather's not that great there, but it's within limits. Can you give us 10,000 extra pounds?' Now I've got three bad cards. For a combat mission, you fly one set of rules—do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission and bring the airplane back, so it can accomplish the next mission. But in peacetime you want to have a bigger buffer between you and bad things happening. Each bad card you get erodes that buffer. You look at each card in isolation: 'Oh, I can handle this, I can handle that.' But can I handle this, this and this all at the same time? And all of a sudden that buffer is a lot less than you want it to be."

Tanker crewmen face their own set of challenges, such as maintaining the airplane's center of gravity as fuel flows from it. The co-pilot initiates pumping after contact is made, and the cockpit crew is re­sponsible for maintaining even fuel distribution in the various wing and fuselage bladders. The nylon bladder walls are less than one-sixteenth of an inch thick, and interior baffles cut down on fuel movement. A series of valves con­trols the fuel flow. During an emergency, any member of the tanker crew, as well as the pilot of the receiver aircraft, can call for a "breakaway," in which the boom is released and the planes im­mediately separate.

Retired Brig. Gen. Paul Cooper, a Lockheed C-141 Star­lifter pilot, provides a perspective from the other side of the IFR equation. He recalled that refueling a "heavy" posed special challenges: "As you got about 100 feet behind the tanker you would encounter the downwash coming off the tanker wings. This acted as a wall—you had to add extra power to penetrate it and then immediately take the power off. As you came underneath the tanker, the C-141 bow wave would cause the tanker tail to rise. If the tanker pilot did not correct quickly for it, there also could be problems. Just like a large ship or heavy railroad train, it became harder to start and stop while taking on fuel, and it was even more critical to maintain position."

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