"The mother of the last KC-135 pilot has not yet been born."

I couldn’t care less about the next generation bomber, and keeping the F-22 line open was probably to be expected. I’d do some additional F-35 trimming, as well. However, while I can understand why no one wants to step back into the aerial tanker mess, the KC-135 is really, really old. Old enough that it’s maintenance costs are growing, and old enough that one or more of them is going to fall from the sky before long. And as Christian notes, saying that we’ll delay the program for five years really means that we’ll be delaying it for at least ten. Trimble has a slightly different view.