Senate Panel Seeks Boeing Tanker Lease Scaleback

[kainah]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites) Chairman John Warner moved Thursday to slash a controversial U.S. Air Force plan to lease and then buy 100 Boeing Co. 767s for $22.4 billion.

But the Air Force's top acquisition official, Marvin Sambur, said Warner's suggestion to lease just 25 planes would be "significantly more expensive" due to lost volume discounts and inflation's impact on buying 75 more over time.

Warner and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's top Democrat, were preparing to ask Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to analyze their plan to pare the lease, aides said.

The Armed Services Committee, which holds the key to whether any such deal is funded by Congress, plans to put off a vote on the lease until it receives the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s review, said John Ullyot, a Warner spokesman.

Warner and Levin plan to ask Rumsfeld for a formal analysis of alternatives, a corrosion study of the existing KC-135 tanker fleet and to seek a review of an independent study that found Boeing should be charging $120.7 million per tanker, not the $131 million agreed on by the Air Force and the Pentagon, people close to the matter said.

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