USAF "Widebody underproduction may hamper Civil Reserve Air Fleet"

 

I never knew of such a thing until I started reading "Tom Clancy" and the book "Prodigal Soldiers" and yes you can find that book on amazon.  Well anyway when I was reading about the activation of a "Civil Reserve Air Fleet" and that it was activated for Desert Storm for the first time. and fictitiously in Tom Clancy books.   They say that Amateurs talk tactics, and professionals talk logistics. and nobody does it like we can.

Kaletta's 747 are one of many wide bodies available to the "Civil Air Reserve Fleet"

KISSIMMEE, Florida–The aircraft industry’s inability to meet growing demand for widebodies could, in the long term, hurt the U.S. military’s ability to rely on the nation’s civil reserve air fleet (CRAF) if needed, the Air Force’s mobility boss warned.

A long-term forecast of commercial wide-body production will present a“strategic challenge that we don’t fully appreciate yet,” Air Mobility Command (AMC) leader Lt. Gen. Daniel Tulley said at the Airlift/Tanker Association Symposium here.

Airbus and Boeing build relatively few widebodies, with the existing fleet already so large, but approximately 3% of those aircraft age out each year, Tulley said, citing a briefing he received at a recent National Defense Transportation Association event. Over the next 10 years, requirements will outpace production, he warned.

“The CRAF depends on commercial widebody capability and capacity for a number of things,” Tulley said in a Nov. 7 interview at the symposium. “There’s the passenger-hauling portion of the CRAF, but we find great value in the cargo haulers that help us out through [U.S. Transportation Command]. If those aircraft are not available when we need them, that’s something we should pay attention to.”

While the CRAF can currently meet the military’s needs, it could be a problem further out. In an April discussion with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, former AMC Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Rebecca Sonkiss highlighted the November 2025 crash of the UPS Airlines MD-11 aircraft as something that affected a “significant capacity” of the CRAF fleet. The crash came as airframers no longer produce major four-engine aircraft and are instead shifting more to underbody cargo, she said.

Tulley highlighted newcomers like JetZero’s Z4 blended wing body design and Radia’s Windrunner cargo aircraft as welcome developments. But these designs are still in work and rely on Pentagon interest and funding.

“It’s great that American industry is bringing that type of innovation forward,” he said. “It’d be great if industry built those things without requiring the Air Force to build them.”

Under the typical model, the military leads development, and commercial industry leverages it—not the other way around.

“I really hope that this is something that our economy and our innovative defense industrial base can get,” Tulley said.