The long-established private aerial refueling services company completed the first aerial refueling of USAF fighters in a potentially precedent-setting exercise.
Though the Omega Air Inc. has been around since the 1980s, it has only just gotten around to providing aerial refueling services to the U.S. Air Force. It’s a significant new development despite the San Antonio, Texas-based company’s track record of providing aerial refueling to U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft for 22 years.
Omega is an outlier. For a start, it’s one of only two commercial firms in the U.S. that offer the highly specialized, uniquely military service that is air to air refueling.
With approximately 100 employees, it’s a small-to-midsize business in terms of staff but a true midsize player in terms of assets and invested capital. That capital has been entirely boot-strapped by the two Irish nationals who own it – brothers Ulick and Desmond McEvaddy.
What’s more, the privately-held company is a turn-key aerial refueling services provider. Omega holds the intellectual property for converting Boeing 707 (an aircraft developed simultaneously with the KC-135 tanker still flown by the USAF) and Douglas DC-1o airliners into FAA/military-certified refueling tankers. It’s a one-stop shop with its own engineering, conversion, maintenance, and supply chain operations.
“We’ve developed all of that expertise within the company on our own dime,” Omega president, Tom Swiderek, told me during a phone interview.
Technically, Omega is actually several companies – San Antonio-based Omega Air Inc. which does the tanker conversions, engine retrofits, logistics and maintenance and provides them to its wholly-owned subsidiary, Omega Aerial Refueling Services (OARS) which operates the tankers for the U.S. military. Another corporate entity, Aircraft Endeavors LLC of San Antonio, is listed as the owner of the aircraft on the FAA Registry.
OARS operates a five-aircraft fleet of two KC-707A (converted 707-320 series) and three KDC-10A/B tankers (one converted ex-Japan Airlines DC-10-40 airliner and two ex-Royal Netherlands Air Force KDC-10s). At present, the company flies only two of the KDC-10s, keeping the third in reserve for an anticipated increase in aerial refueling demand.
The tanker that refueled F-16s from the 51st Fighter Wing transiting from a Osan Air Base in South Korea to Paya Lebar Air Base in Singapore for a joint exercise called Commando Sling 23 is a boom-equipped ex-Netherlands air force aircraft. Its boom-type refueling apparatus differs from the probe-and-drogue refueling gear used by Navy and Marine Corps aircraft.
Since USAF fighter, bomber, airlifter, special mission and other airplanes only employ boom-refueling, the capability, which Omega added in 2019, is essential for any private aerial refueling services contractor hoping to do business with the Air Force.
Omega’s sole U.S. market competitor, California-based Metrea LLC, operates four boom-equipped ex-Republic of Singapore Air Force KC-135R tankers. In June, it refueled U.S. Air Force RC-135 and E-3 aircraft during another exercise, marking the USAF’s first use of commercial air tanker services.
It’s been two decades since Omega began refueling Navy/Marine Corps aircraft in 2001, first as a subcontractor to another firm, then as a prime. As with the similar but different commercial contract adversary (aggressor) services market, the Navy was the first to embrace private contractors and gain experience using their services starting in the 1990s. The Air Force didn’t jump in with both feet until 2019.
But it did experiment with private aggressor services companies through Navy contracts beforehand. It has repeated the pattern with commercial contract refueling. “It’s been a long time coming for the Air Force,” Omega Air’s president says. “They fought it, but they realized they need us as much as we want to refuel for them so here we are.”
For Commando Sling 23, the USAF accessed Omega’s service via a $1.9 billion Multiple Award Contract let by the Navy to OARS and Metrea in 2021. If its experience with both companies has proven attractive, an Air Force-specific contract similar to the one it awarded to seven red-air companies in 2019 could be on the cards.
Tom Swiderek joined Omega in 2007, after a career as a USAF KC-135 pilot whose work on command staffs internationally crossed paths with the McEvaddys. He was well aware of the Air Force’s wariness of using contract aerial refueling but stresses that changing times and a smaller USAF tanker fleet which is being partially recapitalized with Boeing KC-46A aerial refueling tankers – the Air Force will retire its KC-10 fleet by late 2024, it is also retiring KC-135s – have made the Service more receptive.
“Everyone knows there have been some delays on the KC-46 program,” Swiderek says. “It’ll be a great tanker when it’s up and running but they have some needs in the meantime.”
In recent years there has been favorable discussion within the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command around the idea of using private aerial refueling services. Omega’s tankers have been certified to refuel a range of fighter and other aircraft up to and including the F-35B and C. Extending that certification to the USAF’s F-35A would largely be a formality. And with Air Force plans for further KC-46 buys or a move to a next-generation tanker up in the air, the logic of leveraging such services is more attractive.
“Air refueling has always been the anomaly,” Swiderek asserts. “It doesn’t need to be anymore. We’re not just an idea. [Omega] is a proven concept that has worked for the last 22 years, 21 of which were sole-sourced with the Navy. We’ve proven that the industry can flourish.”
In its release on the refueling done with Omega during Commando Sling 23, Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) air mobility operations chief, Lt. Col. Curtis Holtman, explained the Air Force’s rationale for potentially expanded contracting for air-to-air refueling.
“If we can use commercial air refueling to cover the point A to point B movements for exercise participation across unit readiness training, then it frees up our warfighter tanker fleet to be ready to respond for emerging contingency requirements.”
By taking some of the transit and training load tasking off of USAF fleet tankers, their lifecycles can potentially be extended and their crews allowed to focus more on operational combat scenarios. Swiderek opines that the recent successful demos take some pressure off of the Air Force in asking for budgeting for contract air refueling.
“PACAF found a great need for moving airplanes from A to B. We can do the same [within the U.S.] and help relieve the burden of routine training [flights] for receiver pilots [fighter, bomber, etc] and test support. We’re here to help wherever they need us,” Swiderek offers.
Historic U.S. sealift and airlift operations provide ample precedent for using commercial platforms for strategic purposes and for outlining the limits up to which civilian aircrews can take refueling operations in times of War. They also illustrate the capacity relief and flexibility of leveraging commercial fleets in wartime.
“There’s a lot of wartime demand for tankers but there’s also massive wartime and peacetime need that does not involve war zones,” Swiderek points out. “As [Air Force] tankers move forward to a war zone, somebody’s got to do the backfill. The training can’t stop, the delivery of fighters [to operational theaters] can’t stop.”
Omega has expanded slowly and the layered story of its founding by the shrewd McEvaddy brothers is worth another feature in itself. It has effectively been a company awaiting the arrival a mature market, undertaking modification work indirectly related to its core mission and relying on the flexibility offered by its vertical integration.
“If we can’t get enough flying hours to keep an aircraft active,” Swiderek notes, “we’ll park it and bring it back out as needed.”
Omega’s PACAF demo may give it reason to activate its third KDC-10, bringing another boom-equipped tanker online and possibly setting the stage for further growth Swiderek says.
“The [USAF refueling] opens the door to where we can start investing… We can now start bringing airplanes up and looking at other sources for more tankers.”
Those sources may include the KC-10s which the Air Force is retiring. A number of the aircraft it is presently sending to the “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona still have significant life left. The Air Force prizes their unmatched fuel-give (offload capacity) and long range as well as their ability to simultaneously carry substantial cargo or passengers.
Singapore is retiring its KC-135R fleet and other military tankers may come up on the market as well. The airliner conversions that Omega has done increase its potential pool of tanker candidates including large, low-time ex-head-of-state or dignitary airplanes. One of Omega’s KC-707As was formerly used by Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu.
“All the [potential] tankers have pros and cons whether they’re new or older,” Swiderek affirms. “There are certain things we like about certain tankers, other things we don’t like. We’ll choose what gives us the best bang for the buck… You probably will hear about them in the near future.”
Omega’s president points not only to the Air Force’s near-term shortfall in tankers as a sign for expanded contract aerial refueling but to its expanded use of autonomous technology and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft that will come with it. To team with manned aircraft, they’ll need to get across long distances to get to operating areas in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere. That will require fuel from somewhere, like a privately operated air tanker.
“I think we’re in the right place at the right time with the right folks,” Swiderek says.
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