AT PEASE AIR NATIONAL Guard Base, New Hampshire, on 23 February, Senator Kelly Ayote (Republican, New Hampshire) snagged an orientation flight in a C-17 Globemaster III to witness an aerial refuelling from a receiver aircraft. Ayote talked mostly not about the visiting C-17 but about replacing the 157th Air Refueling Wing's KC-135R Stratotankers with the KC-46A that's expected to enter inventory in the near future. The Pentagon has not yet said where the KC-46As will be based. Ayote, 43, is at the cutting edge of a new generation of conservative law-makers who are up in arms over the way the Air National Guard (ANG) has been hammered by the Obama administration's budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2013, which begins on 1 October. They're caught up in a growing rift between the active-duty US Air Force on one side and its 'reserve component' - the term that encompasses both the Air National Guard and the Air, Force Reserve - on the other.
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