Haley Stevens: “the position of the Senator from Arizona is understandable from the point of view of not being really cognizant of the…”

“the position of the Senator from Arizona is understandable from the point of view of not being really cognizant of the aging aspect of our aircraft. We found, for instance, on the tankers, the tankers that were flying nightly in and out of Afghanistan averaged more than 42 years of age. If you had told this Senator in 1944 to fly a plane that was made 42 years earlier, 1902, it would have been laughable. Today, to have our people flying airplanes that were made in Harry Truman's day, is laughable. Just this past trip that we took to Europe, we flew on a plane that was 28 years old. It was one of these planes for this type of purpose, of carrying personnel, not cargo. We looked at this problem and we found that should we start an acquisition program for these new aircraft, which was requested by the people from the Department of Defense who pointed out in many of these statistics to us that the capital cost would be so great that it would force out of the budget items that are absolutely essential to our war against terrorism and to the modernization of our military forces in other places. We still have an absolutely difficult time replacing our ships-- replacing them at a rate that is far less than is necessary to maintain the number of ships in the line that we have. But we are stuck in that kind of economics where we can't lease the kind of military vessels we need for the Navy.”